scholarly journals “Much, I am Sure, Depends on You”: James Fordyce’s Lessons on Female Happiness and Perfection

2013 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 49-62
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Bronk

ABSTRACT Conduct literature written for women has had a long tradition in British culture. According to scholars, such as Ingrid H. Tague (2002), it circulated most widely during the eighteenth century because new ideals of proper feminine behaviour and conduct developed. The Scottish Presbyterian minister and poet, James Fordyce (1720-1796), very observant of the transformations in his society as well as advocating the need to reform moral manners, likewise created a set of sermons dedicated to young women of the second half of the eighteenth century. He is worthy of close study not only because his Sermons to Young Women constitute an important yet understudied contribution to the tradition of conduct writing, but also because he records and disseminates opinions on female perfection both as a man of the church as well as the representative of his sex, thus presenting a broad scope of the official gender ideology of the eighteenth century. The proposed article engages in a close reading of Fordyce's rules and regulations pertaining to proper femininity, pointing also to the tone of his published sermon-manual and the socio-techniques used for the sake of perpetuating his ideological precepts for women. As such, the article is to prove that this popular eighteenth-century preacher, whose work was even mentioned on the pages of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, not only offers a significant contribution to ongoing research on conduct manual tradition as well as on feminist re-readings of women’s history, but also adds more evidence to feminist claims of a purposeful campaign aimed at creating a selfaware and self-vigilant woman who almost consciously strives to become the object of masculine desire, and allegedly all for her own good.

Nordlit ◽  
2015 ◽  
pp. 205
Author(s):  
Silje Solheim Karlsen

<p align="left">Children’s literature has traditionally tended to be aimed primarily at raising and educating children. The setting has played an important role as a didactic and educational element, especially in literature for boys, where the natural setting has been pictured as a space of freedom without boundaries, following the pattern of the robinsonade. However, the didactic literature for <span style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;"><em><span style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT;">girls </span></em><span style="font-family: TimesNewRomanPSMT;">was more related to the </span></span>eighteenth-century genre of conduct literature, a British tradition aimed at giving girls and young women a sense of how they ought to behave, think, feel and respond, following conservative ideals of manners and morals. With this tradition in mind, it is quite interesting that many Norwegian books written for children and teens between the 1930s and 1970s take place in the Arctic, several of them with young girls as heroines and protagonists. Drawing on theories of the didactic function of children’s literature, focusing especially on the Arctic landscape as setting, this article examines three girls’ books from the period 1930–1950 and the roles and spaces this literature present as available for girls and young women. It addresses questions of the significance of the Arctic setting, and asks what kind of space these narratives offer and what kind of limitations and possibilities the representations contain.</p>


Author(s):  
Alison Games

This book explains how a conspiracy trial featuring English, Japanese, and Indo-Portuguese co-conspirators who allegedly plotted against the Dutch East India Company in the Indian Ocean in 1623 produced a diplomatic crisis in Europe and became known for four centuries in British culture as the Amboyna Massacre. The story of the transformation of this conspiracy into a massacre is a story of Anglo-Dutch relations in the seventeenth century and of a new word in the English language, massacre. The English East India Company drew on this new word to craft an enduring story of cruelty, violence, and ingratitude. Printed works—both pamphlets and images—were central to the East India Company’s creation of the massacre and to the story’s tenacity over four centuries as the texts and images were reproduced during conflicts with the Dutch and internal political disputes in England. By the eighteenth century, the story emerged as a familiar and shared cultural touchstone. By the nineteenth century, the Amboyna Massacre became the linchpin of the British Empire, an event that historians argued well into the twentieth century had changed the course of history and explained why the British had a stronghold in India. The broad familiarity with the incident and the Amboyna Massacre’s position as an early and formative violent event turned the episode into the first English massacre. It shaped the meaning of subsequent acts of violence, and placed intimacy, treachery, and cruelty at the center of massacres in ways that endure to the present day.


Author(s):  
Samuel K. Cohn, Jr.

This chapter investigates changes in mentalities after the Black Death, comparing practices never before analysed in this context—funerary and labour laws and processions to calm God’s anger. While processions were rare or conflictual as in Catania and Messina in 1348, these rituals during later plagues bound communities together in the face of disaster. The chapter then turns to another trend yet to be noticed by historians. Among the multitude of saints and blessed ones canonized from 1348 to the eighteenth century, the Church was deeply reluctant to honour, even name, any of the thousands who sacrificed their lives to succour plague victims, physically or spiritually, especially in 1348: the Church recognized no Black Death martyrs. By the sixteenth century, however, city-wide processions and other communal rituals bound communities together with charity for the poor, works of art, and charitable displays of thanksgiving to long-dead holy men and women.


Author(s):  
B. W. Young

The dismissive characterization of Anglican divinity between 1688 and 1800 as defensive and rationalistic, made by Mark Pattison and Leslie Stephen, has proved more enduring than most other aspects of a Victorian critique of the eighteenth-century Church of England. By directly addressing the analytical narratives offered by Pattison and Stephen, this chapter offers a comprehensive re-evaluation of this neglected period in the history of English theology. The chapter explores the many contributions to patristic study, ecclesiastical history, and doctrinal controversy made by theologians with a once deservedly international reputation: William Cave, Richard Bentley, William Law, William Warburton, Joseph Butler, George Berkeley, and William Paley were vitalizing influences on Anglican theology, all of whom were systematically depreciated by their agnostic Victorian successors. This chapter offers a revisionist account of the many achievements in eighteenth-century Anglican divinity.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-200
Author(s):  
Gerardus Rahmat Subekti

The article deals with pastoral care for family according to Amoris Laetitia. The author’s concern is to discuss the pastoral steps for the families in the face of crisis situations: What kind of pastoral steps can be organized to assist families in crisis situations? This article is based on the study of ecclesial document Amoris Laetitia, a post-synodal apostolic exhortation by Pope Francis addressing the pastoral care of families. First of all, the article describes the basic thoughts of this document, especially those related to the reality and ideals of family life. Then, it shows some practical pastoral thoughts for assisting families in special situations. The results can be a significant contribution for the Church in terms of its important duties and responsibilities in assisting the families today, but also for family pastoral activists. This description concludes that the crisis situation faced by families is not a fact to be constantly regretted, but an opportunity for the Church to show God's mercy to those who are struggling in difficult situations.


Author(s):  
Carly Watson

The eighteenth century was an age of miscellanies; thousands of miscellaneous collections containing verse appeared in print over the course of the century. This article considers miscellanies as a distinct kind of verse collection; whereas anthologies promote authorship as a category of literary definition, miscellanies invite readers to sample a variety of poetic forms and genres and often include poems without authorial attribution. The eighteenth-century tradition of miscellanies devoted exclusively to poetry has its roots in the late seventeenth century, and many aspects of seventeenth-century miscellany culture persisted well into the next century. This article looks at a number of ways in which verse miscellanies offer fresh perspectives on eighteenth-century literary culture. The popularity and reception of particular poems and poets, the formation of the English literary canon, and the status of authorship are all areas in which miscellanies make a significant contribution to critical understanding.


2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alistair Mutch

Foucault’s conceptualization of “pastoral power” is important in the development and application of the notion of “governmentality” or the regulation of mass populations. However, Foucault’s exploration of pastoral power, especially in the form of confessional practice, owes a good deal to his Roman Catholic heritage. Hints in his work, which were never developed, suggest some aspects of Protestant forms of pastoral power. These hints are taken up to explore one Protestant tradition, that of Scottish Presbyterianism, in detail. Based on the history of the church in the eighteenth century, four aspects of Protestant pastoral power are outlined: examination, accountability, ecclesiology, and organizing as a good in its own right.


2015 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 183-211
Author(s):  
Trond Bjerkås

From the Stage of State Power to Representative Assembly?: The Visitation as a Public Arena, 1750–1850In the eighteenth century, the bishops’ visitations to dioceses constituted an important part of the control apparatus of the Church and the absolutist state. The article examines visitations in Norway in terms of public arenas, where the common people interacted with Church officials. During the period 1750 to 1850, the visitations were gradually transformed from arenas in which the state manifested its power towards a largely undifferentiated populace, to meeting places that resembled representative assemblies with both clerical and common lay members. Thus, it adapted to new forms of public participation established by the reforms of national and local government in the first half of the nineteenth century. At the same time, the process amounted to an elitization, because a few representatives replaced of the congregation as a whole. It is also argued that parish churches in the eighteenth century functioned as general public forums with a number of other functions in addition to worship, such as being places of trade and festivities. This seems to change in the nineteenth century, when churches became more exclusively religious arenas. The transition can be seen in the context of new forms of participation in Church matters. Many clerics wanted greater participation by sections of the commoners, in order to strengthen control in moral and religious matters.


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