Saskia Lettmaier
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199569977
- eISBN:
- 9780191722066
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199569977.001.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Legal History
While common law actions for breach of promise of marriage originated in the mid-seventeenth century, it was not until the ‘long nineteenth century’ that they saw their rise to prominence and their ...
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While common law actions for breach of promise of marriage originated in the mid-seventeenth century, it was not until the ‘long nineteenth century’ that they saw their rise to prominence and their subsequent fall from favour. This monograph ties the story of the action's rise and fall between 1800 and 1940 to changes in the prevalent conception of woman, her ideal role in society, sexual relations, and the family, arguing that the idiosyncratic nineteenth-century breach-of-promise suit (a luxuriant blend of both contract and tort) and Victorian notions of ideal femininity were uneasily and fatally, but nonetheless inextricably, entwined. It classifies the ninteenth-century breach-of-promise action as a ‘codification’ of the contemporaneous ideal of true womanhood and explores the longer-term implications of this infusion of mythologized femininity for the law, in particular for the position of plaintiffs. Surveying three consecutive time periods – the early nineteenth century, the high Victorian, and the post-Victorian periods – and adopting an interdisciplinary approach that combines the perspectives of legal history, social history, and literary analysis, it argues that the feminizing process, by shaping a cause of action in accordance with an ideal at odds with the very notion of women going to law, imported a fatal structural inconsistency that at first remained obscured, but ultimately vulgarized and undid the cause of action. Alongside more than two hundred and fifty real-life breach-of-promise cases, the book examines literary and cinematic renditions of the breach-of-promise theme, by artists ranging from Charles Dickens to P. G. Wodehouse, in order to expose the subtle yet unmistakable ways in which what happened (and what changed) in the breach-of-promise courtroom influenced the changing representation of the breach-of-promise plaintiff in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literature and film.Less
While common law actions for breach of promise of marriage originated in the mid-seventeenth century, it was not until the ‘long nineteenth century’ that they saw their rise to prominence and their subsequent fall from favour. This monograph ties the story of the action's rise and fall between 1800 and 1940 to changes in the prevalent conception of woman, her ideal role in society, sexual relations, and the family, arguing that the idiosyncratic nineteenth-century breach-of-promise suit (a luxuriant blend of both contract and tort) and Victorian notions of ideal femininity were uneasily and fatally, but nonetheless inextricably, entwined. It classifies the ninteenth-century breach-of-promise action as a ‘codification’ of the contemporaneous ideal of true womanhood and explores the longer-term implications of this infusion of mythologized femininity for the law, in particular for the position of plaintiffs. Surveying three consecutive time periods – the early nineteenth century, the high Victorian, and the post-Victorian periods – and adopting an interdisciplinary approach that combines the perspectives of legal history, social history, and literary analysis, it argues that the feminizing process, by shaping a cause of action in accordance with an ideal at odds with the very notion of women going to law, imported a fatal structural inconsistency that at first remained obscured, but ultimately vulgarized and undid the cause of action. Alongside more than two hundred and fifty real-life breach-of-promise cases, the book examines literary and cinematic renditions of the breach-of-promise theme, by artists ranging from Charles Dickens to P. G. Wodehouse, in order to expose the subtle yet unmistakable ways in which what happened (and what changed) in the breach-of-promise courtroom influenced the changing representation of the breach-of-promise plaintiff in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literature and film.
Chris Beneke
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780195305555
- eISBN:
- 9780199784899
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195305558.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
The conclusion delineates the 19th-century boundaries of American religious pluralism. Those limits emerged most clearly in the persistence of anti-Semitism, the violence inflicted upon Mormons in ...
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The conclusion delineates the 19th-century boundaries of American religious pluralism. Those limits emerged most clearly in the persistence of anti-Semitism, the violence inflicted upon Mormons in western New York, Illinois, and Missouri, and the vitriolic common school debates of 1840 and 1841, which pitted New York’s Roman Catholic leaders against the Protestant-dominated Public School Society. In the case of the Mormons and the Catholics, especially, the 18th-century formula of equal rights for private worship and public inclusion failed. Anonymous living in the increasingly populous cities and the vast expanses of cheap land in the west allowed religious groups to avoid integration. Meanwhile, the continued dominance of Calvinist Protestantism made such isolation attractive. Yet, an important precedent had already been set. The success that early Americans had in maintaining civil peace and encouraging cooperative endeavors between different religious groups provided a reassuring template for future encounters with diversity.Less
The conclusion delineates the 19th-century boundaries of American religious pluralism. Those limits emerged most clearly in the persistence of anti-Semitism, the violence inflicted upon Mormons in western New York, Illinois, and Missouri, and the vitriolic common school debates of 1840 and 1841, which pitted New York’s Roman Catholic leaders against the Protestant-dominated Public School Society. In the case of the Mormons and the Catholics, especially, the 18th-century formula of equal rights for private worship and public inclusion failed. Anonymous living in the increasingly populous cities and the vast expanses of cheap land in the west allowed religious groups to avoid integration. Meanwhile, the continued dominance of Calvinist Protestantism made such isolation attractive. Yet, an important precedent had already been set. The success that early Americans had in maintaining civil peace and encouraging cooperative endeavors between different religious groups provided a reassuring template for future encounters with diversity.
Philip V. Bohlman
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195178326
- eISBN:
- 9780199869992
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195178326.003.0005
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
As the first of three chapters on the “ontologies” of Jewish music — music’s aesthetic, cultural, and musical identities and capacity to exist in the world of modern Jewish society — this chapter ...
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As the first of three chapters on the “ontologies” of Jewish music — music’s aesthetic, cultural, and musical identities and capacity to exist in the world of modern Jewish society — this chapter includes a series of case studies that illustrate moments when Jewish music is identified as such. Invention refers to the ways in which imagining Jewish music undergoes a change to practicing and performing it. The music of the urban synagogue, therefore, passes from oral tradition to the hands of professionals in the nineteenth century, the Jewish cantors whose lives and publications the chapter details. Folk music attracts the attention of Jewish scholars, who ascribe specific attributes and categories to the music they collect in villages and publish in the cities of Europe. Above all, terms such as “Jewish music” acquire new currency by the end of the nineteenth century, inventing Jewish music for modern Jews as if that music had existed since time immemorial.Less
As the first of three chapters on the “ontologies” of Jewish music — music’s aesthetic, cultural, and musical identities and capacity to exist in the world of modern Jewish society — this chapter includes a series of case studies that illustrate moments when Jewish music is identified as such. Invention refers to the ways in which imagining Jewish music undergoes a change to practicing and performing it. The music of the urban synagogue, therefore, passes from oral tradition to the hands of professionals in the nineteenth century, the Jewish cantors whose lives and publications the chapter details. Folk music attracts the attention of Jewish scholars, who ascribe specific attributes and categories to the music they collect in villages and publish in the cities of Europe. Above all, terms such as “Jewish music” acquire new currency by the end of the nineteenth century, inventing Jewish music for modern Jews as if that music had existed since time immemorial.
Kent Puckett
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195332759
- eISBN:
- 9780199868131
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195332759.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
While everyone knows that the nineteenth-century novel is obsessed with gaffes, lapses, and blunders, who could have predicted that these would have so important a structural role to play in the ...
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While everyone knows that the nineteenth-century novel is obsessed with gaffes, lapses, and blunders, who could have predicted that these would have so important a structural role to play in the novel and its rise? Who knew that the novel in fact relies on its characters’ mistakes for its structural coherence, for its authority, for its form? Drawing simultaneously on the terms of narrative theory, sociology, and psychoanalysis, this book examines the necessary relation between social and literary form in the nineteenth-century novel as it is expressed at the site of the represented social mistake (eating peas with your knife, wearing the wrong thing, talking out of turn, etc.). Through close and careful readings of novels by Flaubert, Eliot, James, and others, this book shows that the novel achieves its coherence at the level of character, plot, and narration not in spite but because of the social mistake.Less
While everyone knows that the nineteenth-century novel is obsessed with gaffes, lapses, and blunders, who could have predicted that these would have so important a structural role to play in the novel and its rise? Who knew that the novel in fact relies on its characters’ mistakes for its structural coherence, for its authority, for its form? Drawing simultaneously on the terms of narrative theory, sociology, and psychoanalysis, this book examines the necessary relation between social and literary form in the nineteenth-century novel as it is expressed at the site of the represented social mistake (eating peas with your knife, wearing the wrong thing, talking out of turn, etc.). Through close and careful readings of novels by Flaubert, Eliot, James, and others, this book shows that the novel achieves its coherence at the level of character, plot, and narration not in spite but because of the social mistake.
Saskia Lettmaier
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199569977
- eISBN:
- 9780191722066
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199569977.003.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Legal History
This introductory chapter sets the stage by first establishing links with two fields of scholarship, with regard to which the book can usefully be situated: (i) works examining the interaction ...
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This introductory chapter sets the stage by first establishing links with two fields of scholarship, with regard to which the book can usefully be situated: (i) works examining the interaction between the law and social forces extraneous to the law or, put more crudely, the permeability of the law to cultural ideology; and (ii) nineteenth-century women's history. It then presents the tools of analysis – empiricism and literature – for examining the effects and wider implications of the postulated alliance between the breach-of-promise action and prevalent notions of ideal femininity.Less
This introductory chapter sets the stage by first establishing links with two fields of scholarship, with regard to which the book can usefully be situated: (i) works examining the interaction between the law and social forces extraneous to the law or, put more crudely, the permeability of the law to cultural ideology; and (ii) nineteenth-century women's history. It then presents the tools of analysis – empiricism and literature – for examining the effects and wider implications of the postulated alliance between the breach-of-promise action and prevalent notions of ideal femininity.
Constanze Guthenke
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199231850
- eISBN:
- 9780191716188
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199231850.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, European History: BCE to 500CE
This book offers a fresh look at one of the most tenacious features of Romantic Hellenism: its fascination with modern Greece as material and ideal alike. It suggests that literary representations of ...
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This book offers a fresh look at one of the most tenacious features of Romantic Hellenism: its fascination with modern Greece as material and ideal alike. It suggests that literary representations of modern Greece, by both foreign and Greek writers, run on notions of a significant landscape. Landscape, as a critical term, is itself the product of the period when Greece assumed increasing importance as a territorial, political and modern entity. The implied authority of nature, in turn, follows its own dynamic and highly ambivalent logic of representation. Greece operated as a material symbol, one that shared the brittle structure of the Romantic image. To explicate this enabling structure this study draws on the critical writings of Herder, Schiller and the early Romantics, while grounding mainly German philhellenic writing in its cultural and political context. Main authors discussed are Friedrich Hölderlin and Wilhelm Müller, but also the first generation of Greek writers in the new nation state after 1821: Alexandros Rizos Rangavis, Panagiotis Soutsos, Andreas Kalvos and Dionysios Solomos. To enlist authors challenged to write from within the place of Greece allows not only a new take on the problematic imagery of Greece, but also gives a new dimension to the study of Hellenism as a trans-national movement.Less
This book offers a fresh look at one of the most tenacious features of Romantic Hellenism: its fascination with modern Greece as material and ideal alike. It suggests that literary representations of modern Greece, by both foreign and Greek writers, run on notions of a significant landscape. Landscape, as a critical term, is itself the product of the period when Greece assumed increasing importance as a territorial, political and modern entity. The implied authority of nature, in turn, follows its own dynamic and highly ambivalent logic of representation. Greece operated as a material symbol, one that shared the brittle structure of the Romantic image. To explicate this enabling structure this study draws on the critical writings of Herder, Schiller and the early Romantics, while grounding mainly German philhellenic writing in its cultural and political context. Main authors discussed are Friedrich Hölderlin and Wilhelm Müller, but also the first generation of Greek writers in the new nation state after 1821: Alexandros Rizos Rangavis, Panagiotis Soutsos, Andreas Kalvos and Dionysios Solomos. To enlist authors challenged to write from within the place of Greece allows not only a new take on the problematic imagery of Greece, but also gives a new dimension to the study of Hellenism as a trans-national movement.
Rowan Strong
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780199249220
- eISBN:
- 9780191600760
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0199249229.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
Episcopalianism in nineteenth‐century Scotland is not an institutional history of the Scottish Episcopal Church. Rather, it seeks to identify various sub‐groups and cultures of Scottish Episcopalians ...
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Episcopalianism in nineteenth‐century Scotland is not an institutional history of the Scottish Episcopal Church. Rather, it seeks to identify various sub‐groups and cultures of Scottish Episcopalians in the nineteenth century and what was important to their religious identity. In addition, it concentrates on how these groups of Episcopalians responded to the emerging industrial and urban society of Scotland at the time. Included among Scottish Episcopalians are Episcopalian Gaels in the Highlands; North‐east crofters, farmers and fisherfolk; urban Episcopalians; and aristocratic men and women. An additional major theme of the book is Episcopalianism and Scottish identity during the nineteenth century, examined through the various indigenous traditions that emerged in eighteenth‐century Episcopalianism and the influence of Anglicization.Less
Episcopalianism in nineteenth‐century Scotland is not an institutional history of the Scottish Episcopal Church. Rather, it seeks to identify various sub‐groups and cultures of Scottish Episcopalians in the nineteenth century and what was important to their religious identity. In addition, it concentrates on how these groups of Episcopalians responded to the emerging industrial and urban society of Scotland at the time. Included among Scottish Episcopalians are Episcopalian Gaels in the Highlands; North‐east crofters, farmers and fisherfolk; urban Episcopalians; and aristocratic men and women. An additional major theme of the book is Episcopalianism and Scottish identity during the nineteenth century, examined through the various indigenous traditions that emerged in eighteenth‐century Episcopalianism and the influence of Anglicization.
Elizabeth Elkin Grammer
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195139617
- eISBN:
- 9780199834242
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195139615.003.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
Living in the age of revivalism and evangelicalism, many women were awakened in nineteenth‐century America to the “healing balm” of Christ. Many women were also awakened to—and eventually ...
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Living in the age of revivalism and evangelicalism, many women were awakened in nineteenth‐century America to the “healing balm” of Christ. Many women were also awakened to—and eventually accepted—the “cross” of becoming itinerant preachers in an age that called women to stay at home and assume their duties as wives, mothers, and domestic servants. Grammer opens Some Wild Visions by introducing—with brief biographical summaries—the female evangelists whose autobiographies are under consideration there, by situating their lives within the context of nineteenth‐century evangelicalism, and by considering the importance of race and gender as categories of analysis in the chapters that follow. She concludes by exploring the significance of itinerancy itself for these women writers: not only is itinerancy the literal subject of their autobiographies, it is also their richly meaningful and organizing metaphor of self.Less
Living in the age of revivalism and evangelicalism, many women were awakened in nineteenth‐century America to the “healing balm” of Christ. Many women were also awakened to—and eventually accepted—the “cross” of becoming itinerant preachers in an age that called women to stay at home and assume their duties as wives, mothers, and domestic servants. Grammer opens Some Wild Visions by introducing—with brief biographical summaries—the female evangelists whose autobiographies are under consideration there, by situating their lives within the context of nineteenth‐century evangelicalism, and by considering the importance of race and gender as categories of analysis in the chapters that follow. She concludes by exploring the significance of itinerancy itself for these women writers: not only is itinerancy the literal subject of their autobiographies, it is also their richly meaningful and organizing metaphor of self.
Elizabeth Elkin Grammer
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195139617
- eISBN:
- 9780199834242
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195139615.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
Itinerant preachers, the women in this study were literally and figuratively “homeless.” Having abandoned housekeeping to become evangelists, they broke away from the ideology of domesticity and true ...
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Itinerant preachers, the women in this study were literally and figuratively “homeless.” Having abandoned housekeeping to become evangelists, they broke away from the ideology of domesticity and true womanhood that had defined them spatially, socially, and culturally. Of course these “female strangers” knew that she who lost her life—with its familiar patterns and meanings—for the sake of Christ, would find it. Ultimately, and inevitably, however, when they came to write their autobiographies, these female evangelists were lost without some familiar cultural referent that applied specifically to women of nineteenth‐century America. Thus while their unorthodox careers took them far beyond the bounds of home, they found it necessary as writers to make much use of the language of domesticity in their efforts to understand themselves, to justify their lives to an audience that regarded them with suspicion, and to find a “home” in American culture.Less
Itinerant preachers, the women in this study were literally and figuratively “homeless.” Having abandoned housekeeping to become evangelists, they broke away from the ideology of domesticity and true womanhood that had defined them spatially, socially, and culturally. Of course these “female strangers” knew that she who lost her life—with its familiar patterns and meanings—for the sake of Christ, would find it. Ultimately, and inevitably, however, when they came to write their autobiographies, these female evangelists were lost without some familiar cultural referent that applied specifically to women of nineteenth‐century America. Thus while their unorthodox careers took them far beyond the bounds of home, they found it necessary as writers to make much use of the language of domesticity in their efforts to understand themselves, to justify their lives to an audience that regarded them with suspicion, and to find a “home” in American culture.
Rowan Strong
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780199249220
- eISBN:
- 9780191600760
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0199249229.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
Uses the example of Glasgow to examine the impact on Scottish Episcopalianism of the new urban and industrial society of nineteenth‐century Scotland. It clearly identifies distinct religious ...
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Uses the example of Glasgow to examine the impact on Scottish Episcopalianism of the new urban and industrial society of nineteenth‐century Scotland. It clearly identifies distinct religious sub‐cultures with this urban setting, including working‐class Episcopalianism, middle‐class Episcopalianism, and clerical Episcopalianism whose requirements were, at times, in conflict with one another. The Episcopal Church is seen to be more responsive earlier in the nineteenth century to the new urban masses than has been generally thought by historians. Working‐class Episcopalianism is also more genuine, if informal in its religious need, than proponents of a secularizing nineteenth century have posited.clergyLess
Uses the example of Glasgow to examine the impact on Scottish Episcopalianism of the new urban and industrial society of nineteenth‐century Scotland. It clearly identifies distinct religious sub‐cultures with this urban setting, including working‐class Episcopalianism, middle‐class Episcopalianism, and clerical Episcopalianism whose requirements were, at times, in conflict with one another. The Episcopal Church is seen to be more responsive earlier in the nineteenth century to the new urban masses than has been generally thought by historians. Working‐class Episcopalianism is also more genuine, if informal in its religious need, than proponents of a secularizing nineteenth century have posited.clergy
Şevket Pamuk
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780691166377
- eISBN:
- 9780691184982
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691166377.003.0006
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, Economic History
This chapter studies the record in economic growth, income distribution, and human development for the areas within present-day borders of Turkey in both absolute and relative terms. Turkey's economy ...
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This chapter studies the record in economic growth, income distribution, and human development for the areas within present-day borders of Turkey in both absolute and relative terms. Turkey's economy opened to foreign trade and foreign investment and specialization in agriculture increased during the nineteenth century. While the share of manufacturing activities declined, agricultural production for markets, both domestic and foreign, expanded, especially in the coastal regions. The chapter shows that the spread of industrialization around the world was quite uneven during the nineteenth century. The extent to which industrialization proceeded in different parts of the world can help explain much of the variation in economic growth observed worldwide until World War I.Less
This chapter studies the record in economic growth, income distribution, and human development for the areas within present-day borders of Turkey in both absolute and relative terms. Turkey's economy opened to foreign trade and foreign investment and specialization in agriculture increased during the nineteenth century. While the share of manufacturing activities declined, agricultural production for markets, both domestic and foreign, expanded, especially in the coastal regions. The chapter shows that the spread of industrialization around the world was quite uneven during the nineteenth century. The extent to which industrialization proceeded in different parts of the world can help explain much of the variation in economic growth observed worldwide until World War I.
Karin E. Gedge
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780195130201
- eISBN:
- 9780199835157
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195130200.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
Nineteenth-century American readers regularly encountered powerful and paradoxical images of clergy and women in many fictive genres, a reflection of the cultural tensions manifested in the ...
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Nineteenth-century American readers regularly encountered powerful and paradoxical images of clergy and women in many fictive genres, a reflection of the cultural tensions manifested in the contemporary pastoral relationship. Sensational novelists such as George Lippard exposed the monstrous incongruity of the “reverend rake.” Sentimental novelist Susan Warner constructed a romantic clerical hero who was both benevolent and despotic in his relationship with the female protagonist, while Harriet Beecher Stowe’s minister was impotent, dependent on the women who supported him. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s enduring Scarlet Letter portrayed the pastor as an unworthy saint and Hester Prynne as the worthy sinner. Even pious memoirs and parsonage novels acknowledged the intrusion of sexuality, “something peculiar and insidious” in Stowe’s words, which inevitably corrupted the spiritual relationship between pastors and women. Only transforming it into a marital relationship could, to some degree, resolve the inherent sexual tension.Less
Nineteenth-century American readers regularly encountered powerful and paradoxical images of clergy and women in many fictive genres, a reflection of the cultural tensions manifested in the contemporary pastoral relationship. Sensational novelists such as George Lippard exposed the monstrous incongruity of the “reverend rake.” Sentimental novelist Susan Warner constructed a romantic clerical hero who was both benevolent and despotic in his relationship with the female protagonist, while Harriet Beecher Stowe’s minister was impotent, dependent on the women who supported him. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s enduring Scarlet Letter portrayed the pastor as an unworthy saint and Hester Prynne as the worthy sinner. Even pious memoirs and parsonage novels acknowledged the intrusion of sexuality, “something peculiar and insidious” in Stowe’s words, which inevitably corrupted the spiritual relationship between pastors and women. Only transforming it into a marital relationship could, to some degree, resolve the inherent sexual tension.
Elizabeth Elkin Grammer
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195139617
- eISBN:
- 9780199834242
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195139615.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
This literary study concerns the spiritual autobiographies of seven nineteenth‐century American women who found themselves called, often by way of wild visions, to become itinerant evangelists. ...
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This literary study concerns the spiritual autobiographies of seven nineteenth‐century American women who found themselves called, often by way of wild visions, to become itinerant evangelists. Jarena Lee, Zilpha Elaw, Nancy Towle, Lydia Sexton, Laura Haviland, Julia Foote, and Amanda Berry Smith, though living and writing in an age which perfected the ideology of domesticity, chose literal homelessness for long periods of their lives, thus renouncing their claim upon the paradigm by which many northern women, black and white, measured their lives. Such itinerant lives were no doubt hard to live; they were even harder to write. All autobiographies, of course, attempt to make a story out of the welter of remembered events which constitute the writer's raw material; they attempt, that is, to discover the pattern and the meaning in experience. But if the experiences in question are new and unfamiliar, where will the autobiographer find the cultural reference points which can reveal, or impose, pattern and meaning? The autobiographies which these women wrote are remarkable documents—sometimes artless, often long, and nearly always desperate attempts to assemble, out of familiar cultural materials, plausible representations of lives which were anything but familiar. Invoking in quick succession different and even contradictory models of self—the biblical paradigm of the suffering servant, the domestic ideal of the nurturing mother, and the capitalistic image of the fantastically productive entrepreneur—they attempt to patch together comprehensible Lives which would somehow be equal to their radically original lives. Literally, psychologically, and ideologically, these female preachers were “out of place,” both in the world of nineteenth‐century evangelicalism and in American culture generally. It was in the hope of situating themselves in that culture, of assuring their readers and themselves of their place in nineteenth‐century America, that they wrote their books. Ultimately, however, these women would write somewhat anxious narratives, itinerant autobiographies still in search of their endings and meanings, books which attempt to summon up the interpretive communities capable of understanding strangers and pilgrims. These are, then, stories about the poetics of itinerancy and also about gender and genre, about the particular predicament of women negotiating with their culture for identity.Less
This literary study concerns the spiritual autobiographies of seven nineteenth‐century American women who found themselves called, often by way of wild visions, to become itinerant evangelists. Jarena Lee, Zilpha Elaw, Nancy Towle, Lydia Sexton, Laura Haviland, Julia Foote, and Amanda Berry Smith, though living and writing in an age which perfected the ideology of domesticity, chose literal homelessness for long periods of their lives, thus renouncing their claim upon the paradigm by which many northern women, black and white, measured their lives. Such itinerant lives were no doubt hard to live; they were even harder to write. All autobiographies, of course, attempt to make a story out of the welter of remembered events which constitute the writer's raw material; they attempt, that is, to discover the pattern and the meaning in experience. But if the experiences in question are new and unfamiliar, where will the autobiographer find the cultural reference points which can reveal, or impose, pattern and meaning? The autobiographies which these women wrote are remarkable documents—sometimes artless, often long, and nearly always desperate attempts to assemble, out of familiar cultural materials, plausible representations of lives which were anything but familiar. Invoking in quick succession different and even contradictory models of self—the biblical paradigm of the suffering servant, the domestic ideal of the nurturing mother, and the capitalistic image of the fantastically productive entrepreneur—they attempt to patch together comprehensible Lives which would somehow be equal to their radically original lives. Literally, psychologically, and ideologically, these female preachers were “out of place,” both in the world of nineteenth‐century evangelicalism and in American culture generally. It was in the hope of situating themselves in that culture, of assuring their readers and themselves of their place in nineteenth‐century America, that they wrote their books. Ultimately, however, these women would write somewhat anxious narratives, itinerant autobiographies still in search of their endings and meanings, books which attempt to summon up the interpretive communities capable of understanding strangers and pilgrims. These are, then, stories about the poetics of itinerancy and also about gender and genre, about the particular predicament of women negotiating with their culture for identity.
Jan Olof Bengtsson
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199297191
- eISBN:
- 9780191711374
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199297191.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion
The book challenges the current view that personalism is primarily an early 20th-century phenomenon. The established definitions of personalism, mainly in terms of the American school of B. P. Bowne, ...
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The book challenges the current view that personalism is primarily an early 20th-century phenomenon. The established definitions of personalism, mainly in terms of the American school of B. P. Bowne, are shown to fit broadly the positions of much earlier continental European and Scandinavian philosophers and theologians. The beginnings of specifically personalistic thought are traced to F. H. Jacobi’s criticism of pantheism, first set forth in the 1780s, and the work of the later F. W. J. Schelling. Its development is then identified in the work of selected, representative thinkers who, throughout the 19th century, build on or develop further positions established by Jacobi and Schelling, primarily the thinkers belonging to the broad current of so-called ‘speculative theism’ in Germany and in Sweden. The development of idealistic personalism in Britain by A. S. Pringle-Pattison, J. R. Illingworth, C. C. J. Webb and others is shown to be parallel to the emergence of the American school. It is argued that these should be seen as a continuation of the earlier European movement. Both the American and the British schools drew on the work of H. Lotze, but the book points to the neglected continental European background to Lotze, the current of personalistic, partly idealistic, and theistic philosophy of which Lotze’s work was only one, late variation. Discerning the central themes of the emerging worldview of personalism, the book establishes that they developed consistently in a broad, unitary movement with a distinct historical profile from the late 18th to the early 20th centuries, the nature and importance of which has heretofore been neglected in the history of philosophy and in historical theology.Less
The book challenges the current view that personalism is primarily an early 20th-century phenomenon. The established definitions of personalism, mainly in terms of the American school of B. P. Bowne, are shown to fit broadly the positions of much earlier continental European and Scandinavian philosophers and theologians. The beginnings of specifically personalistic thought are traced to F. H. Jacobi’s criticism of pantheism, first set forth in the 1780s, and the work of the later F. W. J. Schelling. Its development is then identified in the work of selected, representative thinkers who, throughout the 19th century, build on or develop further positions established by Jacobi and Schelling, primarily the thinkers belonging to the broad current of so-called ‘speculative theism’ in Germany and in Sweden. The development of idealistic personalism in Britain by A. S. Pringle-Pattison, J. R. Illingworth, C. C. J. Webb and others is shown to be parallel to the emergence of the American school. It is argued that these should be seen as a continuation of the earlier European movement. Both the American and the British schools drew on the work of H. Lotze, but the book points to the neglected continental European background to Lotze, the current of personalistic, partly idealistic, and theistic philosophy of which Lotze’s work was only one, late variation. Discerning the central themes of the emerging worldview of personalism, the book establishes that they developed consistently in a broad, unitary movement with a distinct historical profile from the late 18th to the early 20th centuries, the nature and importance of which has heretofore been neglected in the history of philosophy and in historical theology.
David Paul Nord
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- July 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780195173116
- eISBN:
- 9780199835683
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195173112.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
In the years after 1815, a few visionary entrepreneurs decided the time was right to launch true mass media in America. They believed it was possible through new technology, national organization, ...
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In the years after 1815, a few visionary entrepreneurs decided the time was right to launch true mass media in America. They believed it was possible through new technology, national organization, and the grace of God to place the same printed message into the hands of every man, woman, and child in America. Though these entrepreneurs were savvy businessmen, their publishing enterprises were not commercial businesses. They were nonprofit religious organizations, including the American Bible Society, American Tract Society, and American Sunday School Union. Faith in Reading tells the story of the noncommercial origins of mass media in America. The theme is how religious publishers learned to work against the flow of ordinary commerce. Religious publishing societies believed that reading was too important to be left to the “market revolution”; they sought to foil the market through the “visible hand” of organization. Though religious publishers worked against the market, they employed modern printing technologies and business methods, and were remarkably successful, churning out millions of Bibles, tracts, religious books, and periodicals. At the same time, they tried to teach people to read those books in the most traditional way. Their aim was to use new mass media to encourage old reading habits. This book examines both publishers and readers. It is about how religious publishing societies imagined their readers. It is also about reader response — how ordinary readers received and read religious books and tracts in early 19th century America.Less
In the years after 1815, a few visionary entrepreneurs decided the time was right to launch true mass media in America. They believed it was possible through new technology, national organization, and the grace of God to place the same printed message into the hands of every man, woman, and child in America. Though these entrepreneurs were savvy businessmen, their publishing enterprises were not commercial businesses. They were nonprofit religious organizations, including the American Bible Society, American Tract Society, and American Sunday School Union. Faith in Reading tells the story of the noncommercial origins of mass media in America. The theme is how religious publishers learned to work against the flow of ordinary commerce. Religious publishing societies believed that reading was too important to be left to the “market revolution”; they sought to foil the market through the “visible hand” of organization. Though religious publishers worked against the market, they employed modern printing technologies and business methods, and were remarkably successful, churning out millions of Bibles, tracts, religious books, and periodicals. At the same time, they tried to teach people to read those books in the most traditional way. Their aim was to use new mass media to encourage old reading habits. This book examines both publishers and readers. It is about how religious publishing societies imagined their readers. It is also about reader response — how ordinary readers received and read religious books and tracts in early 19th century America.
Simon Goldhill
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691149844
- eISBN:
- 9781400840076
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691149844.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This book explores the dynamics of Classics in the nineteenth-century, focusing on art, opera, and fiction and how artworks come to stand for a self-aware statement about modernity—through the ...
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This book explores the dynamics of Classics in the nineteenth-century, focusing on art, opera, and fiction and how artworks come to stand for a self-aware statement about modernity—through the classical past. It raises new questions and new understandings in three major areas of scholarship: nineteenth-century studies, Classics, and the so-called Reception Studies. It examines the discipline of Classics and its place in Victorian culture, as well as some very strong challenges to the Classics as a story, which constitute a need for a major revision of the account. In particular, it considers the relationship between Classics and sexuality. It also discusses the most important revolution of the nineteenth century, and how this affects our understanding of a discipline as a discipline: the loss of the dominant place of Christianity in Victorian Britain.Less
This book explores the dynamics of Classics in the nineteenth-century, focusing on art, opera, and fiction and how artworks come to stand for a self-aware statement about modernity—through the classical past. It raises new questions and new understandings in three major areas of scholarship: nineteenth-century studies, Classics, and the so-called Reception Studies. It examines the discipline of Classics and its place in Victorian culture, as well as some very strong challenges to the Classics as a story, which constitute a need for a major revision of the account. In particular, it considers the relationship between Classics and sexuality. It also discusses the most important revolution of the nineteenth century, and how this affects our understanding of a discipline as a discipline: the loss of the dominant place of Christianity in Victorian Britain.
James Z. Lee and Cameron D. Campbell
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- July 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780199280681
- eISBN:
- 9780191602467
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0199280681.003.0017
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, Economic History
To assess trends in the standard of living in Liaoning province in north-east China during the nineteenth century, the secular change in demographic rates and their sensitivity to economic conditions ...
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To assess trends in the standard of living in Liaoning province in north-east China during the nineteenth century, the secular change in demographic rates and their sensitivity to economic conditions are examined. The findings show that marital fertility rose, child mortality fell and some men were able to marry much earlier. Fertility became less sensitive to grain prices, suggesting a decline in the vulnerability of rural populations to economic shocks. Based on these trends, the conclusion can be drawn that the standard of living in Liaoning rose during the nineteenth century. While these results may not be generalized to China as a whole, they do raise the possibility of variation between and within regions of China in trends in living standards during the nineteenth century.Less
To assess trends in the standard of living in Liaoning province in north-east China during the nineteenth century, the secular change in demographic rates and their sensitivity to economic conditions are examined. The findings show that marital fertility rose, child mortality fell and some men were able to marry much earlier. Fertility became less sensitive to grain prices, suggesting a decline in the vulnerability of rural populations to economic shocks. Based on these trends, the conclusion can be drawn that the standard of living in Liaoning rose during the nineteenth century. While these results may not be generalized to China as a whole, they do raise the possibility of variation between and within regions of China in trends in living standards during the nineteenth century.
Maurice S. Lee
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199797578
- eISBN:
- 9780199932412
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199797578.003.0000
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
The introduction offers a working definition of chance as causal indeterminacy. It also outlines the rise of chance and probability in modern Western thought, paying particular attention to its ...
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The introduction offers a working definition of chance as causal indeterminacy. It also outlines the rise of chance and probability in modern Western thought, paying particular attention to its spread through the sciences and into broader cultural practices of the nineteenth century. The role of chance and probability is crucial for the study of nineteenth-century American literature, with special bearing on longstanding questions of faith, epistemology, and aesthetics. Synopses of the book’s chapters on Poe, Melville, Douglass, Thoreau, and Dickinson appear here, as do framing discussions of transatlanticism, romanticism, pragmatism, and the relation of literature and science.Less
The introduction offers a working definition of chance as causal indeterminacy. It also outlines the rise of chance and probability in modern Western thought, paying particular attention to its spread through the sciences and into broader cultural practices of the nineteenth century. The role of chance and probability is crucial for the study of nineteenth-century American literature, with special bearing on longstanding questions of faith, epistemology, and aesthetics. Synopses of the book’s chapters on Poe, Melville, Douglass, Thoreau, and Dickinson appear here, as do framing discussions of transatlanticism, romanticism, pragmatism, and the relation of literature and science.
Ann Rigney
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199644018
- eISBN:
- 9780191738784
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199644018.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
Using street-names referring to Waverley and Abbotsford as a starting point, this book explains how the work of Walter Scott (1771-1832) became an all-pervasive point of reference for cultural memory ...
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Using street-names referring to Waverley and Abbotsford as a starting point, this book explains how the work of Walter Scott (1771-1832) became an all-pervasive point of reference for cultural memory and collective identity in the nineteenth century, and why he no longer has this role. It breaks new ground in memory studies and the study of literary reception by examining the dynamics of cultural memory and the ‘social life’ of literary texts across several generations and multiple media. Attention is paid to the remediation of the Waverley novels as they travelled into painting, the theatre, and material culture, as well as to the role of ‘Scott’ as a memory site in the public sphere for a century after his death. Using a wide range of examples and supported by many illustrations, this book demonstrates how remembering Scott’s work helped shape national and transnational identities up to World War I, and contributed to the emergence of the idea of an English-speaking world encompassing Scotland, the British Empire, and the United States. It shows how Scott’s work provided an imaginative resource for creating a collective relation to the past that was compatible with widespread mobility and social change; and that he thus forged a potent alliance between memory, literature, and identity that was eminently suited to modernizing. In the process he helped prepare his own obsolescence. But if Scott’s work is now largely forgotten, his legacy continues in the widespread belief that showcasing the past is a condition for transcending it.Less
Using street-names referring to Waverley and Abbotsford as a starting point, this book explains how the work of Walter Scott (1771-1832) became an all-pervasive point of reference for cultural memory and collective identity in the nineteenth century, and why he no longer has this role. It breaks new ground in memory studies and the study of literary reception by examining the dynamics of cultural memory and the ‘social life’ of literary texts across several generations and multiple media. Attention is paid to the remediation of the Waverley novels as they travelled into painting, the theatre, and material culture, as well as to the role of ‘Scott’ as a memory site in the public sphere for a century after his death. Using a wide range of examples and supported by many illustrations, this book demonstrates how remembering Scott’s work helped shape national and transnational identities up to World War I, and contributed to the emergence of the idea of an English-speaking world encompassing Scotland, the British Empire, and the United States. It shows how Scott’s work provided an imaginative resource for creating a collective relation to the past that was compatible with widespread mobility and social change; and that he thus forged a potent alliance between memory, literature, and identity that was eminently suited to modernizing. In the process he helped prepare his own obsolescence. But if Scott’s work is now largely forgotten, his legacy continues in the widespread belief that showcasing the past is a condition for transcending it.
Alexandra Socarides
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199858088
- eISBN:
- 9780199950300
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199858088.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature, Poetry
Through close attention to Dickinson’s literal process of making—to both the material objects and compositional practices she employed in this process—this book takes up the project of analyzing how ...
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Through close attention to Dickinson’s literal process of making—to both the material objects and compositional practices she employed in this process—this book takes up the project of analyzing how knowledge of Dickinson’s process can shape the way we read her poetry. It follows Dickinson through the five main stages of her career: copying poems onto folded sheets of stationery; inserting and embedding poems into correspondence; sewing sheets together to make fascicles; scattering loose sheets; and copying lines on often torn and discarded pieces of household paper. Describing these stages and contextualizing them within the materials and conventions of nineteenth-century culture reveals a poetics at work in Dickinson’s writing that is different from those regularly narrated by literary history. Rather than treating her as an elusive poetic genius whose poems we are simply left to interpret in a vacuum, this book makes Dickinson both more accessible and more complex by delving into the surprising and conventional methods she used to create her work. While reading Dickinson’s poetic project through the scenes and materials of poetic making offers a far more expansive vision of her writing than we currently witness, the book does not only produce new ways of reading Dickinson. It also advocates for a critical methodology that brings together the study of manuscripts, composition, and material culture for a new consideration of nineteenth-century poetry more broadly.Less
Through close attention to Dickinson’s literal process of making—to both the material objects and compositional practices she employed in this process—this book takes up the project of analyzing how knowledge of Dickinson’s process can shape the way we read her poetry. It follows Dickinson through the five main stages of her career: copying poems onto folded sheets of stationery; inserting and embedding poems into correspondence; sewing sheets together to make fascicles; scattering loose sheets; and copying lines on often torn and discarded pieces of household paper. Describing these stages and contextualizing them within the materials and conventions of nineteenth-century culture reveals a poetics at work in Dickinson’s writing that is different from those regularly narrated by literary history. Rather than treating her as an elusive poetic genius whose poems we are simply left to interpret in a vacuum, this book makes Dickinson both more accessible and more complex by delving into the surprising and conventional methods she used to create her work. While reading Dickinson’s poetic project through the scenes and materials of poetic making offers a far more expansive vision of her writing than we currently witness, the book does not only produce new ways of reading Dickinson. It also advocates for a critical methodology that brings together the study of manuscripts, composition, and material culture for a new consideration of nineteenth-century poetry more broadly.
