Strategies of (Self-)Empowerment

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erika Fischer-Lichte
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Theatre History ◽  
Occupy Movement ◽  
The Aesthetic

By drawing on Butler’s concepts of assembly, appearance, and precarity, it is argued that the aesthetic assembly in theatre, quite often, is closely related to various forms of political assemblies, historical and recent, in encouraging self-empowerment of its spectators, and at times also its actors. To make the point, three periods in German theatre history from 1750 until today are considered: First, the theatre of the educated middle class in the eighteenth century. Second, the workers’ mass spectacles in the Weimar Republic. And third, some forms of choric theatre since the 1990s as well as Christoph Schlingensief’s productions featuring different kinds of people in a precarious status. Finally, as regards their capacity to self-empowerment, they are related to the Occupy movement.

scholarly journals Between Art Academy and Entertainment Culture: Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg, John Martin, and the Sublime

Romantik ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 57
Author(s):  
Nikita Mathias
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Volcanic Eruptions ◽  
Natural Phenomena ◽  
Stage Design ◽  
Visual Mode ◽  
Class Interest ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
The Aesthetic

This article discusses the work and the reception of the artists Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg (1740–1812) and John Martin (1789–1854), both in terms of their engagement with art as an academic discipline and in terms of their relationship to the emergent middle-class interest in the consumption of visual spectacle. A central concern in both respects was the aesthetic category of the sublime, which had been established around the mid-eighteenth century as the primary visual mode of experiencing the force and power of nature. De Loutherbourg successfully recreated sublime spectacles (for example, shipwrecks, volcanic eruptions, waterfalls, avalanches) within academy painting and stage design. Later, he invented the Eidophusikon, a multimedia device that was designed to stage dynamic natural phenomena. The Eidophusikon is thought to have influenced London’s pictorial entertainment circle, which proved inspirational for John Martin around half a century later.

DELIGHTFUL COXCOMBS TO INDUSTRIOUS MEN: FASHIONABLE POLITICS IN CECIL AND PENDENNIS

2002 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 289-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire Nicolay
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Upward Mobility ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Class A ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
A Site ◽  
Trade Office

THOMAS CARLYLE’S CONTEMPTUOUS DESCRIPTION of the dandy as “a Clothes-wearing Man, a Man whose trade, office, and existence consists in the wearing of Clothes” (313) has survived as the best-known definition of dandyism, which is generally equated with the foppery of eighteenth-century beaux and late nineteenth-century aesthetes. Actually, however, George Brummell (1778–1840), the primary architect of dandyism, developed not only a style of dress, but also a mode of behavior and style of wit that opposed ostentation. Brummell insisted that he was completely self-made, and his audacious self-transformation served as an example for both parvenus and dissatisfied nobles: the bourgeois might achieve upward mobility by distinguishing himself from his peers, and the noble could bolster his faltering status while retaining illusions of exclusivity. Aristocrats like Byron, Bulwer, and Wellington might effortlessly cultivate themselves and indulge their taste for luxury, while at the same time ambitious social climbers like Brummell, Disraeli, and Dickens might employ the codes of dandyism in order to establish places for themselves in the urban world. Thus, dandyism served as a nexus for the declining aristocratic elite and the rising middle class, a site where each was transformed by the dialectic interplay of aristocratic and individualistic ideals.

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.

Dramaturgical, Theoretical, and Musical Associations between Max Brand’s Maschinist Hopkins and Alban Berg’s Operas

2021 ◽  
Vol 61 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 175-226
Keyword(s):  
Trace Elements ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Richard Wagner ◽  
Social Realism ◽  
Theatrical Design ◽  
Popular Narrative ◽  
Neue Sachlichkeit ◽  
Linear Association ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
The Aesthetic

Abstract In the German-speaking countries during the morally uninhibited years of the Weimar Republic, the opposing cultural epochs of Expressionism and Neue Sachlichkeit dominated the aesthetic landscape. Opera was a central proponent of both movements, as implemented by the Expressionist practitioners and those who favored the subsequent topical and objectifying Zeitoper that sought to move away from representations of psychological distortion to depict social realism that emphasized mechanical technology and lighter, popular narrative themes. Max Brand’s famous Zeitoper, Maschinist Hopkins, will be analyzed to illustrate how it bore fundamental trace elements back to Alban Berg’s Expressionist opera Wozzeck, and likewise, how Hopkins in turn influenced Berg’s second opera Lulu, to constitute a linear association of narrative, music, and theatrical design that simultaneously conformed to and defied the operatic models that all three operas are historically associated with. It will also be suggested that both composers were consequentially influenced by Richard Wagner, promoting vestiges of an even older lineage, which contributed to this association between the three operas at a time when Wagner was less applicable to the trends of innovation and progress.

The Taming of Highland Masculinity: Interpersonal Violence and Shifting Codes of Manhood, c. 1760–1840

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynn Abrams
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Interpersonal Violence ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Indigenous Culture ◽  
Class Culture ◽  
Court Records ◽  
Scottish Highlands ◽  
The Law ◽  
Violent Assault

This chapter argues that male interpersonal violence provides a way in which divergent, conflicting and shifting codes of manliness in Scottish society can be discerned. Historians of masculinity have argued that the eighteenth century saw a change in the model of manhood as male interpersonal violence in defence of honour and reputation was replaced by the advocacy of self-governance and recourse to the law. Using court records of violent assault, this chapter focusses on a type of modernizing society – the Scottish Highlands 1760-1840 - in which a code of violence governed by an indigenous culture of manhood was gradually superceded by new cultural norms. An earlier association of masculinity with interpersonal violence in the Highlands was challenged increasingly from around 1800 by those who advocated civility and restraint amongst men, especially in the growing Highland town of Inverness, the centre of an emerging middle-class culture with changing social sensibilities

Respectable Mistresses

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole von Germeten
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Public Order ◽  
Sexually Active ◽  
History Of

This chapter begins with a quote from the celebrated seventeenth-century Mexico City Poet, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, highlighting the hypocritical intersection between gender and sexuality in this era. The focus here is on the legal history of eighteenth-century middle class women who retained a degree of public honor as they took part in sex work inside their homes.The confused eighteenth-century reactions by church, state, and neighbors to sexually active women often derived from increased opportunities for permitted or at least tolerated socializing between the sexes. These new social spaces challenged official ideas of public order and permissible gender interaction.

Beyond Rhetoric

2021 ◽  
pp. 322-364
Author(s):  
Danuta Mirka
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
String Quartets ◽  
Musical Form ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Multiple Agency

The chapter starts with the discussion of the aesthetic category of “humorous music,” which emerged in the last decade of the eighteenth century, and links it to the theory of multiple agency, proposed by Edward Klorman (2016). There follow two case studies of hypermetric manipulations in the first movements of Haydn’s string quartets Op. 50 No. 3 and Op. 64 No. 1. These analyses reveal how such manipulations act in concert with ingenious deployment of musical topics and contrapuntal-harmonic schemata, and how they affect musical form. The chapter closes with remarks about the role of the first violinist in Haydn’s string quartets.

Fan Fiction in the Eighteenth-Century Literary Landscape

2019 ◽  
pp. 171-200
Author(s):  
Matthew H. Birkhold
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Reciprocal Relationship ◽  
Fan Fiction ◽  
Dense Network ◽  
Unique Form ◽  
Collaborative Authorship ◽  
The Aesthetic

Chapter 5 examines the reciprocal relationship between authors and their readers who wrote fan fiction, illuminating the aesthetic consequences of fan fiction as part of a text’s dynamic reception. Based on close readings of key texts, including works by once-popular but now largely forgotten authors including Friedrich Nicolai, this chapter demonstrates the potential for interaction between works of fan fiction and their sources. Some source authors responded in footnotes and forewords to the unwanted appropriation of a character. Others wrote new chapters. And some, like Friederike Helene Unger, wrote entire sequels in response to the fan fiction they inspired. The result is a dense network of interlinked texts. This chapter contends that fan fiction gave rise to a unique form of collaborative authorship distinct from the so-called Romantic author.

Everyday Aesthetics and the Experience of the Profound

2020 ◽  
pp. 173-202
Author(s):  
Patrick Fessenbecker
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Formal Analysis ◽  
Literary Interpretation ◽  
Aesthetic Value ◽  
Literary Aesthetics ◽  
Intellectual Content ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Everyday Aesthetics ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Deep Thought

The oldest arguments justifying formal analysis of literature, of course, grow out of a longer tradition in aesthetics, one having its roots in the development of a theory of the aesthetic in the eighteenth century. Ultimately, to emphasize the content over the form in literary interpretation is to emphasize forms of aesthetic value other than the beautiful and the sublime: to read for the content, and particularly for the intellectual content, is to value a book because it is deep, thought-provoking, and profound. Yet far from ignoring a text’s aesthetic nature, in fact these latter ways of reading offer the possibility for a renewed justification for literary aesthetics, one especially salient given the deep skepticism that formalist accounts of aesthetic value evoke.

Aesthetic Judgments and Their Cultural Grounding

2019 ◽  
Vol 2018 (3) ◽  
pp. 269-281
Author(s):  
Stefan Majetschak
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Aesthetic Object ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Complex Approach ◽  
Cultural Grounding ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Aesthetic Judgments

Abstract At present, the theoretical approaches of Baumgarten and Kant continue to constitute the framework for discussing the nature of aesthetic judgments about art, including the question of what such judgments are really articulating. In distinction to those two eighteenth-century theorists, today we would largely avoid an assumption that aesthetic judgments necessarily attribute beauty to the objects being judged; we would as a rule take a far more complex approach to the topic. But whatever we say about art, even today many theorists wish to ground aesthetic judgments in particularities of the aesthetic object, like Baumgarten, or in specific moments of the aesthetic experience, like Kant.

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