Sculpture and representation: apprehending marble portrait sculpture in the eighteenth century

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-137
Author(s):  
Malcolm Baker
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Richard Wollheim ◽  
The Spectator

Beginning with a question about how the spectator apprehends a figure or bust in marble as a representation, this article uses eighteenth-century portrait busts in marble to explore how competing theories about representation and the apprehension of art might be applied to a distinctive class of sculpture in a particular material from a specific period. It explores how the terms of a debate formulated by E. H. Gombrich and Richard Wollheim about pictorial illusion might be applied to our perception of sculpture, and goes on to examine the ways in which contemporary accounts of viewing eighteenth-century portrait sculpture might be understood within this context.

On Bourgeois Dignity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Dunn Henderson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Socioeconomic Class ◽  
Joseph Addison ◽  
The Spectator ◽  
And Diffusion

Somewhere near the beginning of the eighteenth century a new concept of “dignity” was emerging alongside the rise of a new socioeconomic class, the bourgeoisie. This chapter explores the development of this distinctive new concept of dignity, investigating first the key elements of the so-called bourgeois virtues that provided content to this new ethos of dignity. Next, it probes the economic, political, and social conditions that facilitated the emergence and diffusion of bourgeois dignity during the eighteenth century. Finally, it discusses how this new understanding of dignity was diffused throughout society by one of the most influential literary endeavors of the period, Joseph Addison and Richard Steele’s The Spectator (1711–1714).

The Complete Spectator

2021 ◽  
pp. 182-211
Author(s):  
Hazel Wilkinson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
British Isles ◽  
Original Series ◽  
Scholarly Edition ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Spectator

The Spectator was one of the greatest publishing sensations of the eighteenth century. The first multivolume collected edition was in the press before the original series had been concluded, and it soon appeared in luxury illustrated volumes, pocket formats, and schoolroom editions. This chapter charts the first hundred years of the Spectator’s life in print, focusing on complete editions produced in the British Isles. The account begins with the Tonsons’ bookselling dynasty, and their dominance of the London Spectator market for the first half of the century, taking in the first illustrations of the papers and the first scholarly edition. In Scotland and Ireland a parallel market flourished, and Scottish writers were responsible for landmark scholarly editions at the turn of the nineteenth century. The chapter is accompanied (in an Appendix) by a descriptive catalogue of complete editions of the Spectator from 1712 to 1812, accounting for 79 editions (over 600 volumes). The catalogue is a key resource for further study of The Spectator, its afterlives, and influence.

The Philosophy of Nature in Diderot and Rousseau

2020 ◽  
pp. 81-141
Author(s):  
Tili Boon Cuillé
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Denis Diderot ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Ideal Model ◽  
Histoire Naturelle ◽  
Moral Sensibility ◽  
Alternate Forms ◽  
The Spectator ◽  
The Ideal

Denis Diderot and Jean-Jacques Rousseau were avid readers of Buffon’s Histoire naturelle and active participants in the quarrels prompted by Rameau’s operas. To date, scholarship has focused primarily on their theorization of physiological and moral sensibility. Chapter 2 investigates Diderot’s and Rousseau’s response to the spectacle of nature, focusing on the affinity between the inspiration of the artist and the identification of the spectator. Jan Goldstein has characterized “enthusiasm” and “imagination” as eighteenth-century smear words. These terms are recuperated in Diderot’s writings on painting and the theater and Rousseau’s writings on opera and the novel, however. Enthusiasm, like pity, necessitates a movement outside oneself that facilitates union with the other and the forging of the ideal model. The chapter concludes by considering the alternate forms of natural spectacle that Diderot and Rousseau envision in their writings.

XXVI. Shakespearean Criticism in the Tatler and the Spectator

PMLA ◽  
1924 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 612-623
Author(s):  
Joshua H. Neumann
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
History Of ◽  
Poetic Justice ◽  
The Spectator

The contribution made to the liberalization of neo-classical criticism by the small but interesting body of Shakespearean comment in the Tatler and the Spectator, deserves more than the passing mention it has hitherto received. The first to point out the entirely unclassical character of some of this material was apparently John Foster, Victorian biographer and man of letters. He notes specifically the absence of any set analysis or fine spun theory about Shakespeare's art, and the spontaneous outbursts of admiration for his philosophy, poetry, ethics and passion, which characterize much of Steele's remarks. G. A. Aitken, in his edition of the Tatler, refers to Steele's plan for improving the “vitiated tastes” of his contemporaries by means of stage representations of the noble characters of Shakespeare and others. Lounsbury discusses Addison's attitude towards the problems of poetic justice and tragi-comedy. Mr. Harold V. Routh observes that Steele discovered in Shakespeare a sublime moralist of middle class life at a time when a poet was generally valued for his rhetoric rather than for any serious reflections on men and manners. Professor Nichol Smith, in his volume of Shakespearean essays, dwells upon Addison's attitude towards Shakespeare's disregard of the “rules,” that veritable touchstone of neo-classical criticism. These remarks are obviously in the nature of chance observations. No attempt has yet been made, as far as the writer is aware, to examine this critical opinion in its relation to the whole history of eighteenth century criticism of Shakespeare. This, therefore, is the purpose of the present paper.

Kit-Cats and Scriblerians: Clubs, Wits, the Tatler, the Spectator, and The Memoirs of Martin Scriblerus

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret J. M. Ezell
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
Jonathan Swift ◽  
The Spectator

The first decades of the eighteenth-century were marked by the rise of sociable clubs of like-minded wits, writers, and politicians, notably the Whig-sympathetic Kit-Cats. Addison and Steele collaborated on periodical publications including the Tatler and the Spectator, with essays on contemporary taste and literary culture. Tory sympathizers including Jonathan Swift produced satiric commentary in publications such as the Examiner. Pope and Swift formed a loose association of satirists, The Scriblerians, which produced The Memoirs of Martin Scriblerus.

Would You Splash Out on a Ticket to Molièe's Palais Royal?

2000 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 248-254
Author(s):  
Claude Schumacher
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Dramatic Literature ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
Theatrical Performance ◽  
Dramatic Text ◽  
Eye Opening ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Spectator

Little by little we are building up a reliable picture of what a seventeenth-century Parisian theatre looked like. In Theatre Research International we published an important article by Graham Barlow's on the Hôtel de Bourgogne in our first volume, and we return to the subject with the eye-opening reconstruction of the Palais Royal by Christa Williford in this, our last issue. In the intervening twenty-five years we have published articles on the problem of law and order in the auditorium, on actors and acting in seventeenth and eighteenth-century France; on the interaction between tragedy and the emerging opera, on theory, on dramatic literature, on the morality of actors and actresses, even on publicity; but nothing, specifically, on the identity of the spectator. And without a clearer impression of who patronized the Parisian theatres, we are in danger of missing important clues, not only concerning the theatrical performance, but also in our reading of the dramatic text—which will inform our theatrical decisions.

scholarly journals Paradigms of Otherness. The American Savage in British Eighteenth-Century Popular and Scholarly Literature

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 235-258
Author(s):  
Federica Perazzini
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Discursive Practice ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
The Spectator ◽  
Popular Texts

In this article, I trace the changes in the literary and material representations of the indigenous peoples of North America within the British sphere of cultural production. As a first example, I will give an account of the episode of the “Four Iroquois Kings” envoy at Queen Ann’s court in 1710, focusing on the resonance of such a historical encounter in popular texts and iconographic material. As a second example, I analyze the popular story of Inkle and Yarico included in Richard Steele’s The Spectator in 1711, showing its impact on the early Enlightenment reflections on colonial trade. In my conclusion, I examine the role of American natives in the scholarly works of the Scottish Enlightenment, in order to show how they were used as comparable types for the observation of the roots of European civilizations thus justifying the construction of the British imperial hegemony both geopolitical terms and discursive practice.

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