Merchant Networks

2020 ◽  
pp. 198-225
Author(s):  
Ron Harris
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Merchant Networks ◽  
Expanded Form

This chapter provides three microstudies on real-life examples of merchant networks in operation. The first microstudy is the Cairo-based Jewish merchants' network, whose records from the tenth through twelfth centuries were preserved in the Geniza and represents, in its India segments, a simple and thin network. Next is the Armenian network centered in New Julfa from the seventeenth through eighteenth centuries that represents the epitome of the merchant network in its most sophisticated, elaborated, and expanded form. Finally, the Sephardic Jewish network based in Livorno in the eighteenth century that exemplifies the marginalization of the network in the shadow of the corporation. The three microstudies provide a taste of some episodes in the rise and decline of merchant networks.

scholarly journals Adeline Mowbray, or, the bitter acceptance of woman's fate

2010 ◽  
pp. 187
Author(s):  
Aída Díaz Bild
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Married Women ◽  
Important Task ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Patriarchal System ◽  
Companionate Marriage ◽  
The Ideal

Eighteenth-century women writers believed that the novel was the best vehicle to educate women and offer them a true picture of their lives and “wrongs”. Adelina Mowbray is the result of Opie’s desire to fulfil this important task. Opie does not try to offer her female readers alternatives to their present predicament or an idealized future, but makes them aware of the fact that the only ones who get victimized in a patriarchal system are always the powerless, that is to say, women. She gives us a dark image of the vulnerability of married women and points out not only how uncommon the ideal of companionate marriage was in real life, but also the difficulty of finding the appropriate partner for an egalitarian relationship. Lastly, she shows that there is now social forgiveness for those who transgress the established boundaries, which becomes obvious in the attitude of two of the most compassionate and generous characters of the novel, Rachel Pemberton and Emma Douglas, towards Adelina.

From ‘Castles in the Air’ to the Topographical Gothic

2019 ◽  
pp. 131-178
Author(s):  
Dale Townshend
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Landscape Painting ◽  
Cultural Transition ◽  
General Sense ◽  
The Real ◽  
Architectural Imagination

This chapter charts the genesis, development, and eventual modification of Ann Radcliffe’s architectural imagination over the most active years of her career. Having provided a reading of the politics of Radcliffe’s fictional castles, and situating her representations within the tradition of eighteenth-century landscape painting, the argument explores the transition from imaginary Gothic architectural forms—those proverbial ‘castles in the sky’—to the ‘real-life’ Gothic castles described in contemporary antiquarian topographies. Broadening the focus out beyond the particular case of Radcliffe, the chapter explores a more general sense of cultural transition in the period, one that resulted in a marked turning away from fake ruins, follies, and fictional ‘castles in the air’ and a movement into the more ‘authentic’, grounded, and antiquarian impulses of the ‘topographical Gothic’.

Real Life or Spectacle? A Conflict in Eighteenth-Century German Drama

PMLA ◽  
1967 ◽  
Vol 82 (7) ◽  
pp. 485-497
Author(s):  
Robert R. Heitner
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Real Life ◽  
German Drama ◽  
The People ◽  
Puppet Theater ◽  
Two Generations

The closing episode of Der neue Menoza involves a lively argument between the representatives of two generations of Germans about the essential purpose of the theatrical experience. A bluff-mannered father, honest and hard-working—a prototype of the “people” in their relatively unspoiled state—likes to go to the puppet theater and laugh at Hanswurst. His educated, super-refined son scoffs at such crude entertainment: “Was die schöne Natur nicht nachahmt, Papa! Das kann unmöglich gefallen … was für Vergnügen können Sie an einer Vorstellung finden, in der nicht die geringste Illusion ist. … Es gibt gewisse Regeln für die Täuschung, das ist, für den sinnlichen Betrug, da ich glaube das wirklich zu sehen, was mir doch nur vorgestellt wird.” Disturbed in his healthy naïveté, the father agrees to test his beloved “Püppelspiel” by the new standards; but he returns home in a fury, roaring, “Du Hund! willst du ehrlichen Leuten ihr Pläsier verderben? Meinen ganzen Abend mir zu Gift gemacht … [sagst] mir von dreimaleins and schöne Natur, daß ich den ganzen Abend da gessessen bin wie ein Narr … gezählt und gerechnet und nach der Uhr gesehen; ich will dich lehren mir Regeln vorschreiben, wie ich mich amüsieren soll.”

scholarly journals Perceptions of Marriage and Human Relationships in Jane Austen’s Novel Emma

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (32) ◽  
pp. 65
Author(s):  
Eljvira Kica
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Jane Austen ◽  
Marriage Market ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Married Women ◽  
Male Dominance ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
The Real ◽  
The People

Emma is a novel written by Jane Austen, which is based on real- life situations of the eighteenth century England. Austen depicts her novels to show clearly the customs and traditions that people had to use in order to get married; her dissatisfaction towards all these conditions; male dominance and also the consideration of women as weak human beings with limited rights. Based on all these issues, Austen chooses different kinds of marriages, mainly based on economical interest. Most of the people in her novels see the marriage as an obligation which had to be fulfilled; most of the girls got involved into a marriage market where parents decided what was good or bad for them. This paper describes the conditions of unmarried and married women Emma; the ways how the unmarried women chose the partners; the ways how Austen compared the conditions of women with the real life situations of the eighteenth century Britain; how she used irony to show her dissatisfaction towards the traditions of that time, and also the real message she conveys to the world.

scholarly journals Defoe’s psychological realism: The effect of directness in indirect consciousness representation categories

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 71-85
Author(s):  
Eri Shigematsu
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Real Life ◽  
First Person ◽  
Autobiographical Narratives ◽  
Psychological Realism ◽  
Indirect Speech ◽  
The Past ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
Narrative Techniques ◽  
The One

Daniel Defoe’s fictional autobiographies represent the life of an individual through personal memories. Although he has often been associated with circumstantial realism rather than psychological realism, Defoe in fact represents the psychological as well as social and economic realities of his characters. In Defoe’s first-person autobiographical narratives, the person who narrates (i.e. the narrating self) and the one who experiences (i.e. the experiencing self) share the same pronoun, ‘I’, which exhibits a fluctuating internal tension between the two selves. This article aims to investigate Defoe’s psychological realism in terms of this internal tension, focusing on the narrative techniques for representing consciousness in which the points of view of the two selves are mingled. The representation of consciousness by means of what is called free indirect speech and thought (FIST) is under development in the early eighteenth century. In Defoe’s fictions, however, the internal tension between the two selves is abundantly indicated by his use of FIST and his handling of directness (the-experiencing-self-oriented deictic and expressive elements) within indirect representations of consciousness (indirect speech and thought (IST) and narrator’s representation of speech/thought act (NRSA/TA)) and within narration (N). The analysis demonstrates that, like FIST, direct elements used in indirect consciousness representation categories show the narrating self’s empathetic identification with the past self, which simultaneously evokes the reader’s empathetic feelings towards the psychology of the experiencing self. It consequently reveals that the creation of empathetic effects through directness helped Defoe to represent the psyches of individuals in remembering as in real life.

Verbal Charms Against Authorities and Judges in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Russia

2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 532-539
Author(s):  
Andrei L. Toporkov
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Royal Family ◽  
Manuscript Tradition ◽  
Military Commanders ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Way

In the 17-18th century Russian manuscript tradition there were no fewer than nine collections (sborniki) consisting of verbal charms that are exclusively or primarily addressed to social issues, and meant to have an effect on judges, military commanders, landowners, bureaucrats, and, not least, on the tsar himself and members of the royal family. The magical purpose of these verbal charms was to have an influence on authorities and judges, to alter the way they felt and their will, their mood and spiritual condition. The tradition of incantations if seen as a whole did not force a person to take this or that specific attitude toward the authorities, but rather offered the possibility of choice either to consider the object of the charm as an implacable foe, deserving of annihilation (if only symbolic), or as someone more positive, from whom love is coaxed. The first type led to the use of “bestial” imagery that was of pagan origin; these charms allowed for the sublimation of aggression and the feeling of social inferiority, channeling these into the creation of fantasy images. The second type makes use of Christian subjects and symbols. Turning to folkloric and then in turn to Christian images, a person would not necessarily contradict himself or play the hypocrite, but rather attempt to resolve on a symbolic plane those practical conflicts that occupied him in real life.

Libertine Intrigues: Opera Girls in Eighteenth-Century British Discourse

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-256
Author(s):  
Caitlyn Lehmann
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Ballet Dancers ◽  
Sexual Status ◽  
Political Criticism ◽  
The Status ◽  
Status Of Women

Throughout the eighteenth century, scandalous literature perpetuated a strongly male-gendered image of dance spectatorship through its preoccupation with the moral and sexual status of female ballet dancers. The frequency with which authors of scandal sheets, novels, satire and political criticism alluded to liaisons involving elite men and dancers was, in part, a reflection of the period's broader fascination with the status of women on the stage. However, this active preoccupation with the sexuality of dancers was also allied to an interrogation of aristocratic and moral codes in Britain and France, and was used to instantiate a performative ideal of elite masculinity. This article focuses on the recurring figure of the opera girl, whose pursuit by aristocratic libertines aroused the contempt, curiosity and envy of readers. Incorporating a critique of extant dance criticism, the article explores the interpretative dilemmas that the opera girl's sensational sexuality has traditionally posed for dance scholarship on account of the tendency for the opera girl's attributes to be mapped onto representations of real-life dancers. Sampling sources as diverse as fashionable periodicals, works of history, sentimental novels and prostitute narratives, this article introduces the singular typology and rhetorical functions of the opera girl that distinguish her as a literary type. In the process, a more nuanced reading of opera girls is offered, one that stresses how opera girls refract the debates and anxieties of the period.

MUSIC AND ‘MUSIC’ IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY META-OPERATIC SCORES

2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALICE BELLINI
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Musical Performance ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
The World ◽  
Poetic Texts ◽  
The Many

ABSTRACT‘Meta-operas’, that is, operas portraying the world of opera and its protagonists (such as impresarios, music directors, librettists and virtuosi), became increasingly common during the eighteenth century. Most of the scholarly literature on meta-opera, however, concentrates on the operas' poetic texts, their librettos. Scholars have dealt with these operas about operas almost as though they were spoken dramas, without taking into account the many ways in which metatheatrical practices and conventions are made more complex by the presence of music.What do meta-operatic scores look like? Are they similar to other ‘ordinary’ scores of the same time, or do their metatheatrical techniques set them aside as special? Considering a number of eighteenth-century works, this article points out how specific musical means can contribute to the overall effect of meta-operatic plots: the stratified nature of meta-narratives is, in fact, mirrored in the scores when realistic music is performed on stage. On these occasions, the presence of more than one layer of musical performance (of music and ‘music’) can be detected in the score. Furthermore, the presence of realistic music allows for a highly flexible treatment of standard operatic practices, and a number of passages work across conventional oppositions such as recitative/closed number, ‘real-life’/‘performed’ and ‘spoken’/‘sung’. Meta-operas, therefore, offer a special perspective on the presence of realistic music in opera.

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