‘Terres vaines et vagues’: Ecocriticism and Breton Wastelands in Visual and Literary Representation

2021 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-191
Author(s):  
Maura Coughlin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Environmental Stewardship ◽  
Visual Artists ◽  
Literary Representation ◽  
Counter Narrative ◽  
Ecological Potential

Despite their long histories as a culturally valuable commons and sites of biodiversity, the Breton landes were frequently depicted by nineteenth-century authors, travellers and administrators as wild, unproductive wastelands. While the architects of France's ‘interior colonization’ identified such areas as an ugly, infertile expanse to be cleared and put to use, many visual artists were producing a compelling counter-narrative, representing the landes and zones humides as places of beauty and reverie. This article examines the work of artists such as François Blin, Camille Bernier, Alexandre Ségé and Henri Rivière from an ecocritical perspective, arguing that their work contributed to a discourse of preservation by encouraging new ways of seeing the land, not for its extractive utility but as a space of unexpected splendour and enchantment. Far from a regressive form of nostalgia, these images encourage a unique ‘dwelling perspective’ which uses aesthetic beauty to reveal the area's ecological potential and to articulate a call for responsible environmental stewardship.

Literary Representation and Social Legitimation: J. L. Burckhardt's Approach to “The Orient”

1981 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 497-511
Author(s):  
Kenneth Sandbank
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Field Of Study ◽  
Literary Representation ◽  
Abdelkebir Khatibi ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
Western Metaphysic ◽  
Social Legitimation

As a field of study, the Middle East, like its predecessor the “Orient”, continues to exist more concretely within a vast realm of Western texts, both artistic and ethnographic, than it does on the ground. This ingrained disparity between representation and social reality has motivated some scholars to examine this literature as the manifestation of physical or ideological domination. In Edward Said's Orientalism the interpretation of this literature becomes a search for determining social and political forces, the evidence of which, like the nineteenth-century anthropological notion of “survivals”, resides in each text as an implicit network of unconscious images and metaphors. Similarly, Abdelkebir Khatibi, investigating the historical and ethnographic texts of Jacques Berque, views this literature as determined by the requirements of an exigent and compelling, but inherently flawed, Western metaphysic; an “onto-tháologie” which, in confronting questions of essence and existence, must formulate an “other” to realize its “self”.

scholarly journals Proměna literární reprezentace stáří skrze postavu staré ženy v povídkové tvorbě autorů 80. a 90. let 19. století

2017 ◽  
Vol 163 ◽  
pp. 499-510
Author(s):  
Jana Vrajová
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Short Stories ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Vertical Stratification ◽  
Literary Representation ◽  
Specific Position ◽  
Literary Movements

Forms of literary representation of age through changes in characters of old women in Czech short stories of 80s and 90s of the 19th centuryThe study deals with different representations of the character of old women in Czech literature of the second half of the nineteenth century. It focuses mainly on three short stories which show exceptof the literary image of old age also the proof of the vertical stratification of Czech literature of the end of the nineteenth century. The study also shows the literary controversy related to literary movements and intertextual relations. The latest short story which the study refers to is called Babiččin pohřeb and was written by Rudolf Karel Zahrádka. It has a specific position in the context of thinking about the use of motifs associated with old age: not only could it be characterized as a subversive text due to the intertextual passages referring to Babička by Božena Němcová, but it can be also identified as a proof of the penetration of the modernistic tendency in Czech literature.Obrazy literackich reprezentacji starości na podstawie postaci starej kobiety w opowiadaniach autorów z lat 80. i 90. XIX wiekuArtykuł dotyczy sposobu reprezentacji postaci starej kobiety w literaturze czeskiej drugiej połowy XIX wieku. Autorka skupia swoją uwagę zwłaszcza na opowiadaniach, które, oprócz literackiego obrazu starości, są również wertykalną stratyfikacją czeskiej literatury końca XIX wieku, jej wewnętrznych dyskursywnych polemik i związków intertekstualnych. Jako najbardziej interesujące jawi się opowiadanie Rudolfa Karla Zahálki Babiččin pohřeb, które można, biorąc pod uwagę związki intertekstualne, oznaczyć za tekst subwersyjny i pokazać na jego podstawie przenikanie do literatury czeskiej tendencji naturalistycznych.

scholarly journals “Colonize and Cholerize”: an attempt to decipher the ambiguity of the literary representation of the cholera epidemics in Nineteenth Century India

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Arijit Goswami ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Special Reference ◽  
Ruling Class ◽  
Modus Operandi ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Literary Representation ◽  
Set Up

The modus operandi of categorising European and especially British authors as representative of the hegemonic colonial enterprise that subjugated the Indian sub-continent for nearly two hundred years is a common analogy while dealing with the colonial era. The seemingly simplistic logic is problematised, when a British author, closely related to the ruling administrative set-up voices dissent, whereas the colonised intelligentsia fails to register minimal protest in their literary works. The article would try to decipher the anti- orientalist discourse with special reference to the literary representation of cholera epidemics in Fanny Parkes’s Wanderings of a pilgrim in search of the picturesque (1850), during the patriarchal-colonising enterprise in vogue and envisage to compare Lal Behari Day’s Folktales of Bengal (1883), which fails to express the reality of an epidemic-devastated land and displeasure of the commoners towards the ruling class for their inept handling of the epidemics.

scholarly journals Historical Master Narratives and the Master Narrative of the Bulgarian Middle Ages

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 259-280
Author(s):  
Roumen Daskalov
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Master Narrative ◽  
National Narrative ◽  
Master Narratives ◽  
Counter Narrative ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Critical Historiography

The article is a brief and schematic presentation of the notion of a “master narrative” and of the master narrative of the Bulgarian Middle Ages, which is the subject a detailed book of mine in Bulgarian. This master narrative was constructed starting with what is known as “Romantic” historiography (from Monk Paisij’s “Istorija Slavjanobolgarskaja” [Slavonic-Bulgarian History] in 1762 to Vasil Aprilov’s writings in the first half of the nineteenth century) but it was elaborated especially with the development of “scientific” (or critical) historiography first by Marin Drinov (1838–1906) and mainly by the most significant Bulgarian historians from the “bourgeois” era: Vasil Zlatarski (1866–1935), Petăr Mutafčiev (1883–1943), and Petăr Nikov (1884–1938). Then it was interrupted by the (crude) Marxist counter-narrative of the late 1940s through the 1960s. Starting in the late 1960s there was a gradual return to the nationalism of the master national narrative, which reached a peak with the celebration of the 1,300th anniversary of the founding of the Bulgarian state in 1981. The same line continued after 1989 (stripped of the Marxist vulgata), yet some new tendencies appeared.

scholarly journals Memory regimes, struggles over resources and ethnogenesis in the Brazilian Amazon

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Edviges M Ioris
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Brazilian Amazon ◽  
Amazon Region ◽  
First Century ◽  
Timber Industry ◽  
Counter Narrative ◽  
Brazilian Amazon Region ◽  
History Of ◽  
Over Time

Abstract The paper focuses on the ethnogenesis processes that emerged in the late 1990s in the Brazilian Amazon region, more specifically among indigenous peoples in the lower Tapajós region, in southwestern Pará. Highlighting the case of the Munduruku, alongside the Borary and Arapium, the paper approaches these ethnogeneses as constituting a new memory regime that provides the indigenous peoples with a counter-narrative to the ways that historiography and the jurisdictions of the dominant power have not only omitted, over time, but that also negated the permanence of ethnic and cultural alterities in the region. Confronting historiographical narratives that, since the mid-nineteenth century, have confirmed their disappearance from the lower Tapajós region, the indigenous peoples arrive at the turn of the twenty-first century presenting a counter-narrative to the erasure of their existence, re-establishing their presence in history of the lower Tapajós, and asserting their demands in negotiations of power. The paper also examines the motivations (material and ideological) precipitating the emergence of these ethnogenesis processes, which have taken shape in a field of disputes strongly defined by the interests of the timber industry.

Housing Crisis: Home and Identity in Nineteenth-Century Literary London

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Lisa C. Robertson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Domestic Space ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
Housing Crisis ◽  
Literary Representation ◽  
Domestic Spaces ◽  
Key Terms

This chapter describes the historical and social context in which new architectural designs, and new social relationships, for domestic spaces emerged. It describes the books key terms, and establishes the parameters of its argument. This chapter explores the literary representation of domestic space, and its connection to written explorations of individual and collective identities.

scholarly journals Sovereign Marks

2018 ◽  
pp. 453-462
Author(s):  
Tanja Aalberts
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Legal Analysis ◽  
Private Company ◽  
Counter Narrative ◽  
The Family ◽  
International Legal Order ◽  
Important Object

This chapter analyses a treaty made on behalf of the Association Internationale du Congo (the infamous private company of King Leopold II of Belgium) with roi Né-Do’ucoula of Boma on 19 April 1884. Whereas legal analysis would usually focus on the content of the treaty and its provisions to establish legal facts, this chapter moves the attention to the signatures at the bottom. It argues that they constitute an important object of international law, as they provide a counter narrative to the popular Standard of Civilisation as the founding doctrine of the Family of Nations in the nineteenth century. As objects of international law the signatures—or rather marks or crosses—embody at the same time the condition of possibility of the nineteenth-century international legal order, and undermine its defining framework (that is, constitute its condition of impossibility).

scholarly journals Visual Artists’ Professional Situations and Trajectories. Between Institutions and the Market

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierre Bataille ◽  
Johannes Hedinger ◽  
Olivier Moeschler
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Visual Field ◽  
Institutional Support ◽  
Visual Artists ◽  
Demographic Profiles ◽  
Artistic Production ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Art Schools

Since the nineteenth-century romanticism, the “singularity regime” highlights the vocation and achievements of the individual creator. Recently, the artist as an entrepreneur has been defended, including within the artistic sector and art schools, and the model of the artist as a worker put forward. Exactly who are visual artists in Switzerland today? What is or are their self-representation(s)? Do artists manage to live from their artistic production? What is the link between their professional and personal trajectories and positions and their socio-demographic profiles, notably in terms of gender? To what extent are they integrated into the artistic market? This contribution draws on a national inquiry on more than 450 artists in the visual field in Switzerland. The results outline changes and constants in a field structured by three poles: market logics, institutional support and non-integration.

scholarly journals Place and Space in Nineteenth-Century Representations of Old London: The Thieves’ House on West Street

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Smyth
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Place And Space ◽  
Counter Narrative ◽  
Old City

Abstract The proposed demolition in 1844 of the infamous ‘Thieves' House’, a dilapidated structure situated on West Street in the notorious London slum of West Smithfield, was the focus of great public interest. Thousands of spectators reportedly came to see the house in the days leading up to its destruction, with some privileged individuals given lamp-lit tours of its interior. An unremarkable facade belied its strange internal construction, which incorporated trap doors, false walls and secret passages. These were described in detail in several journalistic accounts in which the house was imagined as a lair of thieves and murderers, fitted out for the commission and concealment of crime. The house seized the imagination of both authors and artists, becoming the inspiration for serialized fiction, three dramas, and a large body of drawings and prints. While the various representations of it foreground the familiar ‘slum’ narratives of dereliction, degeneration and criminality, this article uncovers a counter-narrative of nostalgia and regret for the old city as a space shaped by the needs of its inhabitants, in contrast to the emerging metropolis designed for the circulation of labour and capital.

Visualizing Equality

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aston Gonzalez
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
Black People ◽  
The United States ◽  
Racial Equality ◽  
Visual Artists ◽  
Reform Movements ◽  
Social Reform Movements ◽  
Changing Roles ◽  
Visual Technologies

The fight for racial equality in the nineteenth century played out not only in marches and political conventions but also in the print and visual culture created and disseminated throughout the United States by African Americans. Advances in visual technologies--daguerreotypes, lithographs, cartes de visite, and steam printing presses--enabled people to see and participate in social reform movements in new ways. African American activists seized these opportunities and produced images that advanced campaigns for black rights. In this book, Aston Gonzalez charts the changing roles of African American visual artists as they helped build the world they envisioned. Understudied artists such as Robert Douglass Jr., Patrick Henry Reason, James Presley Ball, and Augustus Washington produced images to persuade viewers of the necessity for racial equality, black political leadership, and freedom from slavery. Moreover, these activist artists’ networks of transatlantic patronage and travels to Europe, the Caribbean, and Africa reveal their extensive involvement in the most pressing concerns for black people in the Atlantic world. Their work demonstrates how images became central to the ways that people developed ideas about race, citizenship, and politics during the nineteenth century.

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