Passion and Fashion in Joanna Baillie's “Introductory Discourse”

PMLA ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 112 (2) ◽  
pp. 198-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Henderson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Consumer Goods ◽  
The Public ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Joanna Baillie ◽  
Public World ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Character Types

In the preface to her first volume of plays, the Romantic playwright Joanna Baillie claims that one is naturally driven to classify persons into character types, and she argues that this classification should be based on the passions individuals express rather than the fashions they wear. Despite this anticonsumerist stance, however, Baillie's project is shaped by the logic of late-eighteenth-century consumerism: Baillie conceives of passions as items susceptible to inventory, display, and sale. Her interest in establishing a human taxonomy grounded in ostensibly natural and subtle discriminations of character allies her works with other popular consumer goods of the period, from clothing fashions to studies of physiognomy. Moreover, like the aesthetic of the picturesque, Baillie's aesthetic encodes a peculiarly consumerist form of desire, a desire that can never be satisfied because it aims at acquisition rather than possession. In Baillie, the feelings and desires on which modern subjectivity is founded do not spring from deep within but are formed by, and find their meaning in, the public world of the marketplace.

The Practical and Symbolic Functions of Pre-Rameau Opera at the Paris Opéra before Gluck

2020 ◽  
pp. 25-50
Author(s):  
Michel Noiray
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Public ◽  
Italian Opera ◽  
Paris Opera ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Press ◽  
Late Eighteenth

This chapter explains how a uniquely long-lived canon evolved in revivals of operas by Jean-Baptiste Lully and his immediate successors—chiefly André Campra and André-Cardinal Destouches—right up to the early 1770s. The Académie Royale de Musique was unique as the only theater to resist Italian repertory, except in two brief controversial periods. A dogmatic commitment to the old style and repertory survived after Lully’s death, quite separate from the operas of Jean-Philippe Rameau. Opposition to this unique practice broke out occasionally among the public, but such opinion was not widely supported in the press. It is striking that the main critics of ancienne musique, as it was called—Rousseau, Paul Henri d’Holbach, and Friedrich Melchior von Grimm—all came from outside France. This chapter is paired with Franco Piperno’s “Italian opera and the concept of ‘canon’ in the late eighteenth century.”

The Idea of the Aesthetic

2020 ◽  
pp. 11-22
Author(s):  
Michael Bell
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Moral Sentiment ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Aesthetic

Lawrence spoke readily of art and its relation to life but was suspicious of the word ‘aesthetic’, which had been inflected by the aestheticism of the preceding generation. It is nonetheless a necessary term which his thought and practice help to clarify. The idea of the aesthetic has been controversial since its emergence in the late eighteenth century partly in response to the movement of moral sentiment and the fashion of sensibility. Rather than simply reject the excesses of sensibility, the aesthetic condition sought to transmute the quality of the emotion, turning feeling into impersonal understanding. But the cultural war over the value of feeling continued into the modernist generation who sometimes identified as ‘classical’ or ‘romantic’ in their view of emotion. Lawrence mocked such ‘classiosity’ as fear of feeling. This chapter compares him with his major contemporaries and suggests his significance within a broader history of thinking on the aesthetic.

Civilizing the Savage: Johann Georg Sulzer and the ‘Aesthetic Force’ of Music

2002 ◽  
Vol 127 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Riley
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Instrumental Music ◽  
Fine Arts ◽  
Negative Attitude ◽  
Considerable Influence ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Philosophical Background ◽  
The Aesthetic

Johann Georg Sulzer's Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste (1771–4) exerted considerable influence on late eighteenth-century German musical writers. But for many modern commentators, it typifies the negative attitude to instrumental music characteristic of much Enlightenment rationalism. A reassessment of Sulzer, taking account of his philosophical background in Leibniz, Wolff and Baumgarten, shows that in fact he considered music the first of the fine arts. The arts have an ethical, civilizing role; but while most can affect only people who are already partly civilized, music possesses a special ‘aesthetic force’ which energizes the minds of cognitively passive people or ‘savages’.

scholarly journals A paisagem e sua dimensão estética [The aesthetic dimension of landscape]

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (45) ◽  
pp. 37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Esdras Araujo Arraes
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Georg Simmel ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Social ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Elective Affinities ◽  
The Aesthetic

Os estudos que se dedicam à paisagem a compreendem como a materialização de relações entre o homem e o território. Por outro lado, a noção de paisagem abriga, desde sua origem, uma conotação estética, pensada como discurso valorativo da natureza. Assim, o objetivo desse artigo é mostrar a paisagem como categoria do pensamento e parte do campo reflexivo da disciplina Estética. Serão mencionados escritos de determinados filósofos empenhados em interpretar a paisagem em sua dimensão estética. Dentre eles, pode-se citar Georg Simmel, Augustin Berque e Arnold Berleant. Busca-se ampliar sua noção para além das transformações sociais do espaço, celebrando as maneiras sensíveis de apreensão da natureza. Pretende-se, ainda, compreender a noção de paisagem formulada no Renascimento e, especialmente, no final do século XVIII, pondo luz em algumas obras literárias de Goethe, tais como Os sofrimentos do jovem Werther e Escritos sobre arte.[The studies that are dedicated to the landscape understand it as the materialization of relations between man and territory. On the other hand, the notion of landscape has, since its origin, an aesthetic connotation, thought of as a valorative discourse of nature. Thus, the purpose of this article is to show the landscape as a category of thought and part of the reflective field of the Aesthetic discipline. It will be mentioned writings of certain philosophers committed to interpret the landscape in its aesthetic dimension. I will mention, for instance, the research of Georg Simmel, Augustin Berque and Arnold Berleant. It seeks to broaden its notion beyond the social transformations of space, celebrating the sensitive manners of apprehending nature. It is also intended to understand the notion of landscape formulated in Renaissance and especially in the late Eighteenth Century putting light on some of Goethe's literary works, such as The sorrows of young Werther and Elective affinities.]

Overture

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xing Fan
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Original Form ◽  
Practical Application ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

The author refutes the flawed assumption that artistry was sacrificed to politics, or that there is not much art left, in model works. The author situates the study of model jingju at the intersection of three contexts: historic, comprising its original form—the jingju that originated in the late eighteenth century—and its revolutionary trajectory under the CCP from the Yan’an period (1935–1947) to the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976); artistic, encompassing the artistic choices in the five major aspects—playwriting, acting, music, design, and directing—and their practical application in mounting the final productions; and aesthetic, addressing the interrelation and interaction among the major artistic aspects which produce and define model jingju’s style, including its conformity to and deviation from the aesthetic principles of jingju. The author calls for close attention to practitioners and their lived experience of creating model jingju.

Evelina

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frances Burney ◽  
Vivien Jones
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sexual Aggression ◽  
The Public ◽  
Love Story ◽  
Modern Reader ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Popular Novel ◽  
The Way

‘Lord Orville did me the honour to hand me to the coach, talking all the way of the honour I had done him! O these fashionable people!’ Frances Burney's first and most enduringly popular novel is a vivid, satirical, and seductive account of the pleasures and dangers of fashionable life in late eighteenth-century London. As she describes her heroine's entry into society, womanhood and, inevitably, love, Burney exposes the vulnerability of female innocence in an image-conscious and often cruel world where social snobbery and sexual aggression are played out in the public arenas of pleasure-gardens, theatre visits, and balls. But Evelina's innocence also makes her a shrewd commentator on the excesses and absurdities of manners and social ambitions - as well as attracting the attention of the eminently eligible Lord Orville. Evelina, comic and shrewd, is at once a guide to fashionable London, a satirical attack on the new consumerism, an investigation of women's position in the late eighteenth century, and a love story. The new introduction and full notes to this edition help make this richness all the more readily available to a modern reader.

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