Reading Pope's Homer in the 1720s: The Iliad Notes of Philip Doddridge

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-198
Author(s):  
Penelope Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
English Verse ◽  
Professional Critics ◽  
First Time

As a young minister in 1725, Philip Doddridge (1702–1751), later to become one of the most influential figures of eighteenth-century Dissent, embarked on a close reading of Homer's Iliad in Greek alongside Pope's English verse translation of 1715–20. As he read he recorded, in shorthand notes, detailed ‘remarks’ critically comparing the Greek and English texts as works of poetry, with a particular eye to the success or otherwise of Pope's version. The unique manuscript containing the remarks has in part survived, and is held by Dr Williams' Library, London. In this discussion, Doddridge is introduced and his remarks transcribed for the first time. They provide a contemporary reading of Pope's Iliad which in its depth and detail goes well beyond anything else available for private readers, as opposed to the professional critics and scholars whose extensive attacks and defences it elicited.

Coleridge's “ideal Realism”: an alternative to the “doctors of the Absolute”?

1995 ◽  
Vol 16 (01) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Mary Anne Perkins
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Samuel Taylor Coleridge ◽  
The Political ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Magnum Opus ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
First Time

A few months ago I read Peter Nicholson's The Political Philosophy of the British Idealists for the first time. In the index I found more than a hundred references to Hegel and only one to Samuel Taylor Coleridge. However, as many of the latter's writings, published for the first time in recent years, become generally accessible there is an increasing sense that he has been unfairly deprived of his due status as a philosopher. This is partly, no doubt, the syndrome of the prophet in his own country and partly the inevitable consequence of much of his later work remaining unpublished until recent years. Coleridge himself, with what some would take to be confirmation of an over-sensitivity to criticism, felt the neglect of his work went deeper and betrayed an anti-philosophical trait in British character. Despite his close reading of the work of many of his German contemporaries it seems that he did not read more than sixtyone pages of Hegel's Wissenschaft der Logik. His margin notes to this work are, on the whole, negative in their criticism. However, despite significant disagreements, there is much common ground in theme, argument and conclusion between his many drafts of the ‘Logosophia’, his intended magnum opus, and Hegel's system.

“Quelques misérables places à remplir”Locating Shaped Painting in Eighteenth-Century France

2017 ◽  
Vol 80 (4) ◽  
pp. 544-571
Author(s):  
David Pullins
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Visual Field ◽  
Decorative Arts ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract This article addresses in depth for the first time the irregularly shaped canvases known as tableaux chantournés (cut-out paintings) that were produced in vast numbers by leading academicians between the 1730s and 1750s and occupy a tenuous place between fine and applied or decorative arts. Through an examination of the term’s first uses in regard to painting and eighteenth-century critics’ responses to these works, tableaux chantournés are positioned as a means of rethinking the extraction of painting from a richer visual field and the relationship of this medium-specific agenda to the historiography of the rococo.

Studien zu Hölderlin

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Werner Hamacher
Keyword(s):  
German Language ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Poetic Texts ◽  
First Time ◽  
Bear Witness

Following up on his magisterial Berlin master´s thesis on Hölderlin´s poetry of 1971, Werner Hamachers continuing attempts at close-reading Hölderlin represent perhaps the first deconstructions of important poetic texts in the German language. The essays presented here for the first time, in which the late literary theorist also deals with Heidegger's interpretation of Hölderlin, are proof of his extraordinary ability to stage the most rigorous philology in an elegant and witty manner. Anyone who immerses himself in them will always be amazed at how unique Hölderlin's poetry was and still is. At the same time, they bear witness to the exceptional subtlety, precision, and originality for which Werner Hamacher's own work is known.

Aristotle's Approach to Poetry

1981 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-39
Author(s):  
B. R. Rees
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Major Part ◽  
Structural Pattern ◽  
Classical Text ◽  
Samson Agonistes ◽  
Tom Jones ◽  
Artistic Representation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Western European ◽  
First Time

These are the opening words of Aristotle's Poetics, generally recognized as the most influential work in the history of Western European drama and poetic theory since the Renaissance. The initial statement of the scope of the inquiry is a formidable one; but a reader coming to it for the first time might well be forgiven for concluding that it promises far more than it achieves. Is it possible, he might ask, that all this is contained in a slim volume occupying no more than 47 pages in the Oxford Classical Text and 45 in the Penguin translation? Reading further, he might become even more disillusioned: what he discovers is that, after a very brief and perfunctory introduction on poetry as a form of mimesis or artistic representation, Aristotle limits himself to a discussion of tragedy, a cursory treatment of epic, and a few passing references to comedy, and that, even in the case of tragedy, by far the major part of the argument is devoted to an examination of plot. Can this really be the work which excited scholars in the Renaissance, inspired Milton to write Samson Agonistes, an Aristotelian drama if there ever was one, provided the structural pattern and dramatic conventions for the plays of Racine and Corneille, gave Fielding the principles on which he based his Tom Jones, influenced Goethe and Lessing and, through Lessing, Coleridge, and has won the attention and admiration of critics writing in English from James Harris at the end of the eighteenth century to Richard MacKeon in the second half of the twentieth? And, if so, why?

scholarly journals Emotions vocabulary and the reconceptualisation of emotions in Ann Radcliffe’s “The Italian, or the Confessional of the Black Penitents”

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-58
Author(s):  
Elena D. Andonova-Kalapsazova
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Emotional Experience ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Emotional Experiences ◽  
Critical Studies ◽  
Francis Hutcheson ◽  
History Of

The article undertakes the analysis of Ann Radcliffe’s novel The Italian, or the Confessional of the Black Penitents (1797) from a history of literary emotions perspective which, I argue, yields insights into the attitudes towards emotions embedded in Radcliffe’s works. A reading of the novel from such a perspective also complements the critical studies of the artist’s engaging with the eighteenth-century cult of sensibility. The novel is read as a text that registered but also participated in the dissemination of an epistemology of emotional experience articulated in the idiom of eighteenth-century moral philosophers – Francis Hutcheson, David Hume and Adam Smith - at the same time as it retained some of the older, theology-based conceptions of passions and affections. The dynamic in which the two frameworks for understanding the emotions exist in the novel is explored through a close reading of the vocabulary in which Radcliffe rendered the emotional experiences of her fictional characters. In this reading it is the passions which are found to have been invested with a variety of meanings and attributed a range of moral valences that most noticeably foreground the movement from a generally negative towards a more complex appreciation of powerful emotions.

Handel’s Transformative Compositional Practices

2021 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 479-502
Author(s):  
David Ross Hurley
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Vocal Music ◽  
Original Music ◽  
Developing Variation ◽  
Compositional History ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
Musical Transformations ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
First Time ◽  
Variation Process

In recent decades singers of Handel’s music have made great strides in recapturing the art of embellishing his music, thus breathing new life into forms such as the da capo aria. Yet Handel’s own “variations”—his development and transformation of musical material in his vocal music, important for understanding his compositional practice with borrowed as well as (presumably) original music—are not yet fully explored or appreciated. Admittedly, scholars have discussed musical procedures such as inserting, deleting, and reordering musical materials, as well as other Baroque combinatorial practices in Handel’s arias, but the musical transformations I discuss here are closer to a specifically Handelian brand of developing variation. To my knowledge, the concept of developing variation has never before been applied to early eighteenth-century music. I explore the relation of developing variation to drama (also rarely done) in two of Handel’s arias, providing a close examination of “Ombre, piante” from the opera Rodelinda and new thoughts about “Lament not thus,” originally intended for the oratorio Belshazzar. Although these arias belong to different genres and different stages of Handel’s career, they both exhibit material that undergoes a kind of progressive variation process that has tangible musical and dramatic ramifications, of interest to opera specialists and performers. Furthermore, both arias have a complicated compositional history; I offer fresh insights into the aesthetic qualities of each version, thereby throwing light on Handel’s possible compositional intentions. This article also discloses for the first time some recurring musical passages shared between “Lament not thus” and other pieces that could influence the listener’s interpretation of certain musico-dramatic gestures.

A Newly Discovered Annotated Partimento Manuscript : "Rudimenti di Musica per Accompagnare del Sig. r Maestro Vignali" (1789)

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-88
Author(s):  
Sean Curtice ◽  
Lydia Carlisi
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Teaching Methods ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
English Language ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
First Time ◽  
Unknown Manuscript

The partimento tradition of eighteenth-century Italy developed within a musical culture that prioritized oral pedagogy. While these teaching methods were successful in producing generations of great composers, they have left scholars with vexing questions concerning the precise manner in which partimenti should be realized. The recent appearance of a remarkable and previously unknown manuscript—"Rudimenti di Musica per Accompagnare del Sig. Maestro Vignali," dated 1789—promises to shed invaluable new light on the oral tradition of partimento instruction. The manuscript's likely author is Gabriele Vignali (c. 1736– 1799), a maestro di cappella active in Bologna; it is unique in the presently known canon owing to the detailed footnotes that accompany each of its twenty-four Bassi (one in each major and minor key). Vignali's annotations provide precisely the sort of commentary that was ordinarily restricted to real-time explanation, teaching the student to recognize keys, scale degrees, modulations, cadences, typical bass progressions, and significant motives. The present article and accompanying English-language edition examine this exceptional partimento collection in detail, offering modern partimentisti the opportunity for the first time to listen in, as it were, on a series of lessons between an eighteenth-century maestro and his student.

Dementia during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: a conceptual history

1987 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 829-837 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. E. Berrios
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Cognitive Deficit ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Age Group ◽  
Mental Function ◽  
Historical Material ◽  
First Time ◽  
Legal Meaning

SynopsisAn historical analysis is made of the word and of the concept of ‘dementia’ before the nineteenth century. With regard to the word, it is shown that it had legal and medical meanings and that, while the former developed during the seventeenth century, the latter did so only during the eighteenth century (earlier than psychiatric historians have suggested). As evidence for the latter point, rare historical material on ‘Démence’ from the first edition of the Encyclopédie Française is presented for the first time in English. It is also shown that the legal meaning was finally enshrined in the ‘Code Napoléon’. With regards to the concept of dementia, it is shown that it took final shape in the work of Willis, Hartley and Cullen in whose view it was made to include terminal states of behavioural incompetence due to severe failure of almost any mental function. During this period, dementia was not yet associated with a particular age group nor was specifically defined in terms of cognitive deficit. The origins of the ‘cognitive’ paradigm of dementia and of the clinical boundaries of the future concept of dementia are briefly outlined.

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