Jeremy Gray. The Real and the Complex: A History of Analysis in the Nineteenth Century. (Springer Undergraduate Mathematics Series.) xvi + 350 pp., figs., illus., apps., bibl., index. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2015. €36 (paper).

Isis ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 108 (2) ◽  
pp. 455-456
Author(s):  
Craig Fraser
Love, Inc. ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 83-112
Author(s):  
Laurie Essig

Getting engaged now requires more emotional and financial resources than ever before. Here Essig traces the history of engagements from the birth of companionate marriages in the nineteenth century to the invention of rituals like the bended knee and fetish items like the diamond ring in the early twentieth century. But the real change happened at the beginning of the twenty-first century, as engagements became “spectacular,” requiring not just highly staged events but also highly produced videos and images that could then be disseminated to the larger world.


2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 136-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oskar Cox Jensen

This article considers three case studies – the first aqua-drama at Sadler's Wells in 1804, the naumachia in Hyde Park of 1814, and the launching of HMS Nelson at Woolwich, also in 1814 – in order to discuss maritime spectacle in Regency London. I identify an essentially political distinction between the representation of ships and the role of sailors, linked to wider questions of authenticity as understood by contemporary London audiences. I argue that the Thames riverscape itself contributed to Londoners' self-identification as nautically literate connoisseurs, unlikely to acclaim spectacles they perceived to be inauthentic. By this reading, the maritime spectacles of early nineteenth-century London constitute a misstep in a longer and more successful history of nautical theatre and melodrama, that remained fundamentally entangled with questions of democratic representation, the real versus the represented, and London's maritime identity.


2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 86-98
Author(s):  
Nikita Braguinski

Quadrilles were a popular genre of group dancing in the nineteenth century. Existing melodies were normally used to accompany the dancing sessions, but the monotony of their repetition and the cost of a professional piano player capable of improvising were an issue. Thus, the idea of a “machine” that would be able to endlessly produce quadrille music at no cost was suggesting itself. The Quadrille Melodist, a paper-based system for the generation of piano pieces, was published in nineteenth-century Victorian London by John Clinton, a “professor in the Royal Academy of Music.” Already in 1650, Athanasius Kircher proposed in his Musurgia Universalis a device consisting of stripes with short snippets of music that could be used to create combinatorial pieces and variations. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, a whole genre of quasi-algorithmic compositions was emerging, spurred by the popularity of such works as the Musikalisches Würfelspiel, a piece attributed to Mozart. In this article, I analyze the Quadrille Melodist against the background of the history of combinatorial music. I contrast its unique features with other predigital, as well as later digital, music systems and discuss its design with respect to the phenomenon of predictability in dance music. Additionally, I discuss reasons for the circumstance that the historically advertised number of possible quadrilles, 428 million, is much smaller than the real number of combinations.


Author(s):  
Donald Bloxham ◽  
Devin O. Pendas

This article is divided into three roughly chronological sections, each dealing with an important stage in the chequered history of the legalist paradigm. Despite the real innovations of the nineteenth century, people take the Nuremberg trials as starting point because the legal developments of the immediate post-war period served as the crucible for most subsequent developments in international legalism. Criminal trials are intended to punish crime. Such punishment has classically been justified in one of three ways, as retribution, as a means for preventing the perpetrator from committing similar crimes again in future, and as a way of deterring other potential offenders from engaging in similar crimes themselves. In addition, trials for genocide and crimes against humanity have often been justified as forms of political and moral pedagogy. In the end, though, none of these justifications make much sense when applied to genocide.


2003 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 299-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans-JüRgen Lechtreck

Two early nineteenth century texts treating the production and use of wax models of fruit reveal the history of these objects in the context of courtly decoration. Both sources emphasise the models' decorative qualities and their suitability for display, properties which were not simply by-products of the realism that the use of wax allowed. Thus, such models were not regarded merely as visual aids for educational purposes. The artists who created them sought to entice collectors of art and natural history objects, as well as teachers and scientists. Wax models of fruits are known to have been collected and displayed as early as the seventeenth century, although only one such collection is extant. Before the early nineteenth century models of fruits made from wax or other materials (glass, marble, faience) were considered worthy of display because contemporaries attached great importance to mastery of the cultivation and grafting of fruit trees. This skill could only be demonstrated by actually showing the fruits themselves. Therefore, wax models made before the early nineteenth century may also be regarded as attempts to preserve natural products beyond the point of decay.


2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 244-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holger Funk

In the history of botany, Adam Zalužanský (d. 1613), a Bohemian physician, apothecary, botanist and professor at the University of Prague, is a little-known personality. Linnaeus's first biographers, for example, only knew Zalužanský from hearsay and suspected he was a native of Poland. This ignorance still pervades botanical history. Zalužanský is mentioned only peripherally or not at all. As late as the nineteenth century, a researcher would be unaware that Zalužanský’s main work Methodi herbariae libri tres actually existed in two editions from two different publishers (1592, Prague; 1604, Frankfurt). This paper introduces the life and work of Zalužanský. Special attention is paid to the chapter “De sexu plantarum” of Zalužanský’s Methodus, in which, more than one hundred years before the well-known De sexu plantarum epistola of R. J. Camerarius, the sexuality of plants is suggested. Additionally, for the first time, an English translation of Zalužanský’s chapter on plant sexuality is provided.


2002 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-336
Author(s):  
PIOTR DASZKIEWICZ ◽  
MICHEL JEGU

ABSTRACT: This paper discusses some correspondence between Robert Schomburgk (1804–1865) and Adolphe Brongniart (1801–1876). Four letters survive, containing information about the history of Schomburgk's collection of fishes and plants from British Guiana, and his herbarium specimens from Dominican Republic and southeast Asia. A study of these letters has enabled us to confirm that Schomburgk supplied the collection of fishes from Guiana now in the Laboratoire d'Ichtyologie, Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris. The letters of the German naturalist are an interesting source of information concerning the practice of sale and exchange of natural history collections in the nineteenth century in return for honours.


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