Levellerism in Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth-Century Britain

1988 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. K. Donnelly

This article explores the connections between the seventeenth-century Leveller movement and the democratic radicalism of the period 1790 to roughly 1840. At first glance the two appear to have much in common. Both were concerned with the extension of the franchise, the idea of a written constitution, and the equality of citizens before the law. Various commentators on the subject, including some historians, have suggested that such a continuity does indeed exist. Unfortunately this conclusion has been based for the most part on vague connections indicating a lack of solid research on this topic. An exception in this regard is the 1962 essay of Olivier Lutaud which traced many of the linkages of Leveller ideas and phrases in European literature.By contrast historians of seventeenth-century England have tended towards a too ready acceptance of a discontinuity between the Levellers and the democrats of the post-1788 era. They have been content to consign the Levellers to “relative oblivion” and “near-oblivion,” and to assert, quite erroneously, that Leveller pamphlets were not reprinted in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. At the same time we must be aware that the historian of early nineteenth-century radical movements is not confronted with a powerful body of evidence indicating strong Leveller-radical connections. The influence of Levellerism on subsequent radical-democratic movements was subtle and somewhat oblique in nature.

2006 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 621-628
Author(s):  
Mary Ann Smart

Giacomo Leopardi was convinced that the willingness of Italians to wallow passively in operatic spectacle was an important reason for Italy's lack of a civil society based on debate and the exchange of opinions. Despite recent proposals that opera and opera going constituted signiªcant means of social engagement and contributed to regional and/or national identity, the preoccupations of early nineteenth-century music journalism suggest that opera existed outside the mainstream of both political and aesthetic debate, and was not yet the subject of a truly vibrant national discourse.


While the twenty-first century has brought a wealth of new digital resources for researching late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century serials, the subfield of Romantic periodical studies has remained largely inchoate. This collection sets out to begin tackling this problem, offering a basic groundwork for a branch of periodical studies that is distinctive to the concerns, contexts and media of Britain’s Romantic age. Featuring eleven chapters by leading experts on the subject, it showcases the range of methodological, conceptual and literary-historical insights to be drawn from just one of the era’s landmark literary periodicals, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. Drawing in particular on the trove of newly digitised content, specific essays model how careful analyses of the incisive and often inflammatory commentary, criticism and original literature from Blackwood’s first two decades (1817–37) might inform and expand many of the most vibrant contemporary discussions surrounding British Romanticism.


2021 ◽  
Vol 76 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-162
Author(s):  
Joe Bray

Joe Bray, “‘Come brother Opie!’: Amelia Opie and the Courtroom” (pp. 137–162) This essay examines how Amelia Opie’s lifelong fascination with the human drama of the courtroom is reflected in her fiction, specifically in her tales that revolve around trial scenes. Focusing on three examples in particular, “Henry Woodville” (1818), “The Robber” (1806), and “The Mysterious Stranger” (1813), it argues that Opie’s fictional courtrooms encourage an emotional engagement on the part of both characters and narrators, which in turn can be extended to that of the reader. In the case of “The Mysterious Stranger,” a character is on figurative trial throughout, with both narrator and reader frequently in the dark as to her motives. As a result, judgment is both hazardous and uncertain. Through a sympathetic representation of the passions and vicissitudes experienced by all those in the courtroom context, whether real or metaphorical, Opie’s fiction develops a model of readerly participation that adds a new, affective dimension to traditional accounts of the relationship between early-nineteenth-century literature and the law.


2006 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 373-390 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine D Watson

This article contributes to the literature on the history of medico-legal practice by using a survey of 535 poisoning cases to examine the emergence of forensic toxicological expertise in nineteenth-century English criminal trials. In emphasizing chemical expertise, it seeks both to expand upon a limited literature on the history of the subject, and to offer a contrast to studies of criminal poisoning that have tended to focus primarily on medical expertise. Poisoning itself is a topic of abiding interest to historians of forensic medicine and science because (together with insanity) it long tended to attract the greatest attention (and often confrontation) in criminal proceedings. In looking at a wide number of cases, however, it becomes apparent that few aroused true medico-legal controversy. Rather, the evidence from several hundred cases tried as felonies during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries indicates that prior to the 1830s few presented any opportunity for “a battle of experts”. While Ian Burney and Tal Golan have shown that this was certainly not the case during the mid and late nineteenth century, this paper goes further by dividing the period under study into three distinct phases in order to show how expert testimony (and experts themselves) changed during the course of the century, and why this process opened a door to the potential for formalized controversy.


Author(s):  
C. H. Alexandrowicz

The historian of international law attempting an inquiry into the law of recognition of States and governments during its formative stage, particularly into eighteenth-century sources, is bound to consult the first historical survey of the literature of the law of nations by D. H. L. Ompteda, published in 1785. Ompteda referred to problems of recognition under the general heading of the fundamental right of nations to freedom and independence. All the essays he mentioned as being directly or indirectly relevant to problems of recognition of new States or rulers were written by comparatively unknown authors. Among them, Justi and Steck were perhaps the most active participants in the first attempts to formulate a theory of recognition. This chapter considers these early attempts, in particular the direct influence of Justi and Steck on Martens and Klueber, and through them on Henry Wheaton and some of the early nineteenth-century writers.


2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naofumi Abe

Abstract The middle of the eighteenth century reportedly witnessed the emergence of the new literary movement in Persian poetry, called the “bāzgasht-e adabi,” or literary return, which rejected the seventeenth-century mainstream Indian or tāza-guʾi style. This literary movement recently merits increased attention from many scholars who are interested in wider Persianate cultures. This article explores the reception of this movement in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Iran and the role played by the Qajar royal court in it, mainly by the analysis of a specific sub-genre of tazkeras, called “royal-commissioned tazkeras,” which were produced from the reign of the second Qajar monarch Fath-ʿAli Shāh onward. A main focus will be on the reciprocal relationship between the court poets/literati and the shah, which presumably somehow affected our understanding of Persian literature today.


1936 ◽  
Vol 5 (14) ◽  
pp. 121-122
Author(s):  
D. A. Macnaughton

This epitaph is on a tombstone in the churchyard of Kenmore, Perthshire, a little village on the shores of Loch Tay, close to the point at which the river leaves the parent lake. In the early nineteenth century Kenmore had some importance as the market of a wide rural area and as containing the parish church and parish school. The epitaph is the work of the son, William Armstrong, who succeeded to his father's post and died in 1879. Purists might perhaps take exception to the post-classical authority of puritate, but it will be generally allowed that as the composition of the Headmaster of a rural parish school its Latinity is as remarkable as its pietas. It is to be regretted that the author left no pupil to pay him a fitting tribute in the same tongue. But among his alumni there were many who remembered his teaching with admiring gratitude. Of these was one of the principal farmers of the district who told me years ago that he held Latin in high esteem as the subject which, as he put it, ‘opened his head’. His precise meaning eluded me until in later years I reflected that Highland farmers have a gift of imagination and a command of terse and figurative expression. Clearly what he implied was that, just as, when Hephaestus split the skull of Zeus, Athene sprung out in full panoply, so the impact of the lene tormentum of Latin on his own brain let wisdom loose.


2000 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anton Minkov

AbstractAlthough the existence of tapus is well known, their typology, form, and structure have not been the object of a detailed analysis. Based on research undertaken in the Ottoman archive of the National Library of Bulgaria, I analyze eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Ottoman tapu title deeds. I argue that their 'classical' eighteenth-and nineteenth-century form is the outcome of the amalgamation of (1) receipts for payment of the tapu fee (resm-i tapu) and (2) records of land transfer. I also argue that the process of amalgamation probably started in the middle of the sixteenth century and continued until the second half of the seventeenth century.


1960 ◽  
Vol 92 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 32-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. K. Bassett

Much has been written about British activities in the Far East, particularly in China, in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, especially by American historians. Dr. H. B. Morse's monumental Chronicles of the East India Company trading to China was first in the field and Professor E. H. Pritchard and J. K. Fairbank have been worthy successors. English scholarship on the subject is naturally somewhat older but, possibly for that reason, the work done has not usually been as detailed or thorough: an exception is Michael Greenberg's recent book, British Trade and the Opening of China, 1800–42. To find general surveys of Anglo-Chinese relations by British writers which extend back into the seventeenth century, it is necessary to turn to the books of A. J. Sargent and J. Bromley Eames. But as far as the seventeenth century is concerned historical research has been scanty. That Greenberg should have regarded a summary of events before the period with which he was immediately concerned as sufficient for his purpose was only natural. Fairbank's introductory chapters are more comprehensive but show greater interest in the attitude of the Chinese to external intruders than in the efforts of the East India Company to intrude. Sargent, as he himself acknowledged, was mainly concerned with the nineteenth century and his attempt to provide a historical background was very superficial. Eames paid considerable attention to early British contacts with China but was prone to errors of fact which make him unreliable.


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