Pompeo Batoni at Houston’s MFAH

 [David Garrick, 1764]

I haven’t had a chance to see this exhibit yet, but it’s got some great 18c portraits, and I don’t even have to fly to Oxford or Rome to see them.  For a bonus, here’s the local review.

DM

ACLA at sunny Long Beach, CA, April 24-7, 2008

Carl Fisher, who will soon be participating in the Long 18th MLA roundtable, is also helping to organize this comparative literature conference.  The deadline has just been extended to Dec. 3, so hurry.

 Best,

DM

18th century blogging round-up: material culture

It’s a cold and miserable November Houston morning, with temps in the 40s, and too much to do this week.  Instead of doing my real work, I’ll bring together some of the most interesting 18c blogging that I’ve run into this week:

1.  Tim Burke’s Easily Distracted outlines his long-running Social History of Consumption course, with tons of interesting readings on the transition from early modern to modern patterns of consumption, with prominent attention early on to the now-classic arguments of Weatherill, Porter and Brewer, and Breen.  As he points out, the most intriguing thing going on here is its “subtext” as a course in methodology for history, since those readings “run the gamut from rigorously quantitative economic history to off-the-wall cultural commentary.”

2. Jem at This Gaudy Guilded Stage blogs Lynn Festa’s 2005 ECL article on 18c wigs, and notes the creepy fact that the wigs were made of human hair, which had to be harvested and reworked.  If you’ve ever seen any of the pictures of late 18c wigs, like this one, you’ll see that this meant a lot of hair.  [UPDATE: I've added a Project MUSE link to the Festa piece, for those whose libraries subscribe]  [incidentally, would anyone be interested in blogging Festa's new book?]

I’ve taken the illustration from Michael Kwass’s “Big Hair: A History of Wig Consumption in 18c France,” from AHR, 2006, which anyone interested in hair-as-a-commodity should check out.

3. This is an older reference, but I thought others might find it pertinent.  Rene at Age of Enlightenment (not too active lately) has a review of Gilly Lehmann’s The British Housewife.  The most interesting observation is that the intended audiences for these cookbooks seems to have shifted over the course of the century from housewives to professional cooks, though mainly female cooks. 

Thoughts, comments, suggestions?

DM

Pop Quiz

How does this news story resemble this one?  Explain.

UPDATE and Bonus: try to find any mention of university administrators or “enrollments” in this article about excessive class sizes in higher education.  And try to find some supporting evidence for the suggestion that new technologies will solve this problem.

SECOND UPDATE.  Aha.  Here’s the homepage for one of the “sources” of this piece: Dr. Carol A. Twigg, who heads up the National Center for Academic Transformation, which seems to be a Pew-oriented non-profit arguing for a new surge of university investment into information technology and assessment.  The good news: they say that distance ed and large lecture courses don’t work and are” labor intensive.”  The bad news: they want universities to save money/teach more effectively by “redesigning” large volume intro courses to reflect their software/testing model, and relieve themselves of these “labor intensive” courses.  Hmmm.  Did the AP reporter just write up the press release?  And has anyone on this blog had any contact with this group?

DM

Charles Taylor on Secularization Narratives in both the West and “Non-West”

For those of you interested in Michael Warner’s recent address on Politics and Religion, pursued from a slightly different angle . . . .

Amardeep Singh, in his own blog, points us to the ongoing discussion of Charles Taylor’s new book, A SecularAge, which is taking place at Taylor’s own Social Science Research Council blog, where Taylor has himself responded here.  The most engaging part of Taylor’s work is his willingness to re-examine the ethnocentricity of the Weberean master-narratives of modernization in the light of non-Western experiences of modernization.  So, for example, we find him contrasting the Weberean narrative of secularization as a “marginalization” of religion, with a more sophisticated narrative of “destabilization” and “recomposition”:

If we look at the Western cases first, and try to think of the changes which go under the title “secularization,” we find a very confused set of assumptions and master narratives. The narratives of what were earlier called the “secularization” thesis were often predicated on a) a simple global notion of “religion,” b) a definition of secularity as the absence of “religion”, and c) beliefs to the effect that the inevitable consequence of the changes called “modernization” (economic growth, urbanization, greater geographical and social mobility, the rise of science and technology, the greater importance of instrumental reason, bureaucratic rationality, and so on) was to undermine and marginalize “religion,” and hence bring on “secularization.” (A more recent and sophisticated variant of this narrative can be found in the work of Steve Bruce.)

A more believable form of narrative is rather this: that the developments of “modernity” did indeed, destabilize earlier forms of religious life. No-one could even try to restore the sacral monarchy of France (Indeed, when Charles X tried to restore the full mediaeval coronation ceremony at Reims in 1825—complete with cures for scrofula from the King’s touch—it fell completely flat.) No-one can restore the village parish community whose time is organized around saints’ days and festivals, even though that was still very alive in parts of Europe (not to say Québec) in the first part of the last century.

But this decay of older forms often is followed by a “recomposition” (Danièle Hervieu-Léger’s term) of new forms. Everybody has learned to identify a successive series of forms of congregational Christian life starting with Pietists and Methodists in the 18th Century, and then moving through and into (among others) the Pentacostal movements which in the last 100 years have grown in spectacular fashion (and also have burst well beyond the bounds of the “West”). David Martin has written on this.

3. So a crucial area of work is to recognize the nature and spread of the new forms. New kinds of devotion, discipline, congregational life; but also new ways in which (in some sense) “religious” markers become central to political mobilization, often in competition to more secular” markers (the two models of French nationalism, Catholic versus Jacobin; the struggle in the Arab world between Baathist or Nasserite nationalism and various forms of Islamism); and also the ways in which “religion” is seen as essential to the stability of social-moral order.

This seems to me a much more plausible way to conceptualize the re-functioning of religion between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (explaining, for example, some of the differences between Methodism and old-fashioned Dissent), and explains better the importance of our period for an understanding of modernity and modernization. 

See also Simon During’s astute remarks on the secular and the mundane here, and Akeel Bilgrami on secularism and disenchantment here.  Somewhere in the midst of these arguments is an important emerging position regarding the long-term historical significance of the European Enlightenment.  Are scholars of the Enlightenment paying attention?

UPDATE: here’s Stuart Jeffries’ mostly sympathetic review from the Guardian.  And now, courtesy of 3quarksdaily, the oddly noncommital John Patrick Diggins review.

Best,

DM

Short Takes. . . .

1.  In a recent interview, Derek Gordon, a VP at Technorati, observes that there are roughly 109.2 million blogs currently being maintained out in cyberspace right now, or roughly one blog for every 23 persons with internet access, or one blog for every 151 people alive on this planet, assuming the planet’s population to be around 6.6 billion.  Of course, according to Gordon, many active bloggers maintain more than one blog, and the “vast majority of blogs exist in a state of total or near-total obscurity.”  I don’t know what to think about this, but I do know that it’ll be an awfully long time before anyone responds to this post.

2.  The Community College Dean and Dr. Crazy have a civil and productive exchange about unbridled, out of control, positively unhinged faculty hatred: senior faculty hatred of students, junior faculty hatred of senior faculty, universal hatred of administrators.  What can I say?  Administrators win hands down.

3.  Profgrrrrl needs help organizing her notes, pdfs, etc.  It’s an interesting question, now that most of us routinely spend our days moving from one medium to another, without any single medium or repository to hold our thoughts.  It used to be xeroxes, or yellow pads, or manila folders, hanging files, and filing cabinets.  What is it now? 

4.  Two of the reasons why I haven’t posted so much lately: this and this.  I’m looking forward to Thanksgiving.

Best,

DM

British Museum Searchable Art Database

Ooh, this is good.  Thanks to Mercurius Politicus for letting us know about this one.  I could spend hours goofing around with the database, but as usual, I just typed in “Diogenes” to see what came up, and found this nice mezzotint of “Diogenes looking for an HONEST MAN” from 1776.   Here’s the link to the BM: happy hunting.

DM

Tyburn’s Martyrs

The criminals went to the place of execution in the following order, Morgan, Webb, and Wolf, in the first cart; Moore in a mourning coach; Wareham and Burk in the second cart; Tilley, Green, and Howell in the third; Lloyd on a sledge; on their arrival at Tyburn they were all put into one cart. They all behaved with seriousness and decency. Mary Green professed her innocence to the last moment of the fact for which she died, cleared Ann Basket, and accused the woman who lodged in the room where the fact was committed. As Judith Tilley appeared under terrible agonies, Mary Green applied herself to her, and said, do not be concerned at this death because it is shameful, for I hope God will have mercy upon our souls; Catharine Howell likewise appeared much dejected, trembled and was under very fearful apprehensions; all the rest seemed to observe an equal conduct, except Moore, who, when near dying, shed a flood of tears. In this manner they took their leave of this transitory life, and are gone to be disposed of as shall seem best pleasing to that all-wise Being who first gave them existence.

In the course of my research over the years, I’ve read the records of coroners’ inquests – murders, gruesome accidents, negligence and cruelty – and they are distressing and disturbing, yet they don’t evoke quite the same sense of culture shock as do the pamphlets containing accounts of executions like the one above.

We aren’t simply talking about the execution of murderers here: in the 18th century burglars, robbers, pickpockets, horse thieves, sheep- and cattle-rustlers, forgers and counterfeiters could all face slow, horrible deaths, in most cases public strangulation, and this was regarded by most people as perfectly normal and civilised. (Indeed, there were those who thought that hanging was not punishment enough.)

Ordinary’s Accounts are one of the many sources we’re digitising in the Plebeian Lives project. These are rich and fascinating sources, full of stories of the lives of common people. But they are also stories of death, and they give me the willies.

So, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of Andrea McKenzie, since she has written an entire, densely detailed book about the subject and the source: Tyburn’s Martyrs: Execution in England 1675-1775. She must be a tougher soul than me.

In fact, at the very beginning of the book she mentions some of the bemused reactions she received from people learning what her research topic was, including the gentleman who suggested that she should study “something pleasant, like great battles”.

McKenzie suggests that “the gallows were… a stage on which the condemned fought what contemporaries would have viewed as the greatest battle of all, publicly confronting the so-called ‘King of Terrors’: death”. Moreover, “the language of martyrology, legitimation and resistance were intertwined… traitors, martyrs, murderers and robbers alike drew from a common eschatology in which the ‘good death’ was not only an ultimate goal, but a powerful political and metaphysical statement’.

As she acknowledges, “there is much about early modern English sensibilities – or what we would see as the lack thereof – to horrify the modern reader”. But this is not a good reason to shy away from the topic: early modern attitudes towards execution are revealing of wider belief systems, which saw life as “not sacred, but forfeit… as a result of original sin”. Execution “was at the very heart of everyday contemporary eschatological discourse”.

McKenzie documents the journeys made by the condemned from Newgate to Tyburn, the reactions of observers to the behaviour of those on the gallows, depending on whether they were perceived to have made a ‘good’ death. The actions of the watching crowd often depended on their attitude towards individual convicts: the notorious and despised Jonathan Wild, for example, was pelted with stones.

She also traces the history of the publications that constitute her main sources, the ‘last dying speeches’ and Ordinary’s Accounts, and their decline in the later 18th century with the cultural rejection of the spectacle of the scaffold and its printed artefacts as vulgar and barbaric. McKenzie makes it clear that the Ordinary’s Account – and often its author – was frequently considered vulgar well before its decline.

The complex balancing act of ‘dying well’ on the gallows – striving for a “happy mean between presumption and despair” – is chronicled in detail. While the condemned were exhorted to think of Jesus as an exemplar, they were not supposed to go so far as to suggest that his innocence also mirrored theirs.

The ‘game criminal’ was the target of much criticism by the Ordinary – the real-life likes of Swift’s Clever Tom Clinch:

He stopt at the George for a Bottle of Sack,
And promis’d to pay for it when he’d come back.
…
Like a Beau in the Box, he bow’d low on each Side;
And when his last Speech the loud Hawkers did cry,
He swore from his Cart, it was all a damn’d Lye.

Still, the obstinate ‘game’ criminals served as useful counterpoints to the properly and tearfully (but not too tearful, especially the men) penitents, for the Ordinary’s moralising purposes. Their ‘false courage’ (mainly due to alcohol, according to the Ordinary) could be contrasted to genuine ‘Christian courage’, their pride made their fall inevitable and all the more instructive.

But it was difficult to doubt the courage of one group killed by the early modern English state: those who underwent peine forte et dure – pressing to death – for their obdurate refusal to plead to charges against them. Some may have done this to prevent the seizure of their estates following a trial; but by the 18th century that was not very likely to happen in any case. McKenzie suggests that the decision to endure this torture represented a challenge to, a rejection of, the authority of the courts, allowing them to ’seize the initiative’ and ‘demonstrate their resolution and courage’ to the world.

Peine forte et dure was abolished in 1770, by which time it was seen by educated elites as ‘irrational and benighted’ as well as barbaric and cruel. Similarly, by then, the public theatre of Tyburn no longer had the cultural and moral resonance that it had had in the early 18th century; the Ordinary’s Account ceased publication in the 1770s. The Tyburn procession was abolished in 1783 – though not because it was unpopular, but because it was too rowdy and undisciplined.

There is, McKenzie concludes, a cultural gulf between 1675 and 1775 “so wide that, from the vantage point of the twenty-first century, we can barely see our way across it”. She views the change in terms of not a ‘decline’ in religiosity but its ‘redefinition’: the rejection of ‘enthusiasm’ and providentialism in favour of “a ‘rational religion in which rationality was both a human and divine attribute”, and which emphasised internalised virtues rather than public displays. McKenzie’s study demonstrates the benefits of overcoming our horror and at least attempting to understand what made the people of the early 18th century tick.

Further reading, for the stout-hearted

Tyburn Tree: Execution in Early Modern England
Old Bailey Proceedings (server is down again at the moment, so I can’t track down the punishment pages)
Last Mile Tours: hanging in 18th-century England
Early Eighteenth-century Newspaper Reports
EMR Bibliography
Simon Devereaux, Imposing the Royal Pardon: Execution, Transportation, and Convict Resistance in London, 1789

(X-posted (and shortened somewhat) from EMN.)

The Constant Couple at the Pearl Theater, NYC

I just saw this advertised today in the New York Times.  This play was Peg Woffington’s big break in London, in the role of Sir Harry Wildair.  It’s not a cross-dressed part: she was simply cast as the male lead, with legendary success. 

A wealthy heir and avowed man of pleasure, Harry courts the disreputable Lady Lurewell and the virtuous Angellica, whom he comically mistakes for a prostitute.  The Life of James Quin, Comedien tells a much-repeated anecdote: 

Upon her coming off the stage, in the character of Sir Harry Wildair, [Woffington] said, with no little triumph, ‘Lord, I believe the whole house thinks I am a man.’ – ‘By G-d, Madam,’ says [James Quin], ‘half the house knows the contrary.’

 William Hogarth later painted her in this role.  Perhaps inspired by her success as Wildair, Woffington went on to play Lothario in The Fair Penitent.  
 

 

 

 The Constant Couple
by George Farquhar
Directed by Jean RandichNovember 13- December 23

Purchase Tickets Online

George Farquhar’s youthful comedy The Constant Couple (1699) invites us into a London teeming with colorful characters. Steadfast Colonel Standard wants nothing more than to win the charming Lady Lurewell. But his way is littered with scheming rivals, troublesome fops, and bumbling rustics, all of whom seem to have some claim on his lady love. Combining all the wicked joy of the jaded Restoration stage with the “novel” notion that faithfulness and integrity might have their uses too, The Constant Couple illuminates a world merrily careening between deceit and honesty, cynicism and hope—between the follies of the past, and the glorious possibilities of the future.

Short takes . . . .

1.  The Guardian has a nice review of Vic Gattrell’s City of Laughter.  Has anyone used this for their courses? (Courtesy of ariealt.net)

2.  Greg at Slawkenbergius gives us a nice reading of Addison’s “peregrinating shilling,” with a nifty reference to Deleuzian flows of commerce at the end.

3.  Sharon at EMN directs us to Anthony Grafton’s latest essay at the New Yorker, including a very useful accompanying group of links.  I was particularly taken by the long-term interest in the retrieval of information, through note-taking systems like this one:

Fast, reliable methods of search and retrieval are sometimes identified as the hallmark of our information age; “Search is everything” has become a proverb. But scholars have had to deal with too much information for millennia, and in periods when information resources were multiplying especially fast they devised ingenious ways to control the floods. The Renaissance, during which the number of new texts threatened to become overwhelming, was the great age of systematic note-taking. Manuals such as Jeremias Drexel’s “Goldmine”—the frontispiece of which showed a scholar taking notes opposite miners digging for literal gold—taught students how to condense and arrange the contents of literature by headings. Scholars well grounded in this regime, like Isaac Casaubon, spun tough, efficient webs of notes around the texts of their books and in their notebooks—hundreds of Casaubon’s books survive—and used them to retrieve information about everything from the religion of Greek tragedy to Jewish burial practices. Jacques Cujas, a sixteenth-century legal scholar, astonished visitors to his study when he showed them the rotating barber’s chair and movable bookstand that enabled him to keep many open books in view at the same time. Thomas Harrison, a seventeenth-century English inventor, devised a cabinet that he called the Ark of Studies: readers could synopsize and excerpt books and then arrange their notes by subject on a series of labelled metal hooks, somewhat in the manner of a card index. The German philosopher Leibniz obtained one of Harrison’s cabinets and used it in his research.

It was also interesting to me how difficult it has been for entrepeneurs to find a proper business model for their digitization efforts, which have resulted in the scattered, incomplete, and/or abandoned projects that have built up ever since microfilm projects were started in the 1940s, even when there were plentiful library dollars to buy such collections.  The unevenness of these collections means that libraries and scholars will need to devote resources to cataloguing and retrieval among multiple, large-scale digital collections.

4.  The Tenured Radical has a very nice post up about giving good conference papers.  I try to do most of these things already.  But Carrie will tell you that I do wave my arms around too much. That’s why I prefer blogging.

Best,

DM