Theory and Practice in the Eighteenth Century ed. by Alexander Dick and Christina Lupton

2010 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-92
Author(s):  
Donald R. Wehrs
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Theory And Practice

Aristocracy about 1760: Theory and Practice

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. R. Palmer
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Rank ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Political Freedom ◽  
Social Utility ◽  
Class Consciousness ◽  
General Consensus ◽  
The People ◽  
Important Sense

This chapter considers the prevailing notion in the eighteenth century that nobility was a necessary bulwark of political freedom. Whether in the interest of a more open nobility or of a more closed and impenetrable nobility, the view was the same. Nobility as such, nobility as an institution, was necessary to the maintenance of a free constitution. There was also a general consensus that parliaments or ruling councils were autonomous, self-empowered, or empowered by history, heredity, social utility, or God; that they were in an important sense irresponsible, free to oppose the King (where there was one), and certainly owing no accounting to the “people.” The remainder of the chapter deals with the uses and abuses of social rank and the problems of administration, recruitment, taxation, and class consciousness.

THE “HARD FORM” OF SCULPTURE: MARBLE, MATTER AND SPIRIT IN EUROPEAN SCULPTURE FROM THE ENLIGHTENMENT THROUGH ROMANTICISM

2008 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 455-486 ◽  
Author(s):  
LINDA WALSH
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
External Appearance ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Familiar World ◽  
A Site ◽  
Aesthetic Values

The apparently distinct aesthetic values of naturalism (a fidelity to external appearance) and neoclassicism (with its focus on idealization and intangible essence) came together in creative tension and fusion in much late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century sculptural theory and practice. The hybrid styles that resulted suited the requirements of the European sculpture-buying public. Both aesthetics, however, created difficulties for the German Idealists who represented a particularly uncompromising strain of Romantic theory. In their view, naturalism was too closely bound to the observable, familiar world, while neoclassicism was too wedded to notions of clearly defined forms. This article explores sculptural practice and theory at this time as a site of complex debates around the medium's potential for specific concrete representation in a context of competing Romantic visions (ethereal, social and commercial) of modernity.

COMMUNICATING EMPIRE: THE HABSBURGS AND THEIR CRITICS, 1700–1919

2009 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 117-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. J. W. Evans
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
The Other ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Free Standing ◽  
Power Base ◽  
The One ◽  
At Home

ABSTRACTIn the vibrant current debate about European empires and their ideologies, one basic dichotomy still tends to be overlooked: that between, on the one hand, the plurality of modern empires of colonisation, commerce and settlement; and, on the other, the traditional claim to single and undividedimperiumso long embodied in the Roman Empire and its successor, the Holy Roman Empire, or (First) Reich. This paper examines the tensions between the two, as manifested in the theory and practice of Habsburg imperial rule. The Habsburgs, emperors of the Reich almost continuously through its last centuries, sought to build their own power-base within and beyond it. The first half of the paper examines how by the eighteenth century their ‘Monarchy’, subsisting alongside the Reich, dealt with the associated legacy of empire. After the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 the Habsburgs could pursue a free-standing Austrian ‘imperialism’, but it rested on an uneasy combination of old and new elements and was correspondingly vulnerable to challenge from abroad and censure at home. The second half of the article charts this aspect of Habsburg government through an age of international imperialism and its contribution to the collapse of the Dual Monarchy in 1918.

John Weaver and the Origins of English Pantomime: A Neoclassical Theory and Practice for Uniting Dance and Theatre

2001 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Neoclassical Theory ◽  
The Past ◽  
Rare Combination ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century

Theatre historians have long acknowledged John Weaver as the father of English pantomime. In 1985, however, the foremost Weaver scholar, Richard Ralph, noted that no one had systematically studied Weaver's pantomime descriptions, printed in The Loves of Mars and Venus, nor had classical influences upon Weaver been sufficiently investigated.1 Scholarship in the past fifteen years has not filled these gaps; thus, this article begins an examination of these two areas of Weaver's work. They are especially significant because the pantomime descriptions and classical influences reveal that Weaver was a scholar-artist, a rare combination in his era, whose theories and practices deepened the interplay among the arts in early eighteenth-century England.2

OCCASIONAL POLITENESS AND GENTLEMEN'S LAUGHTER IN 18th C ENGLAND

2014 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 921-945 ◽  
Author(s):  
KATE DAVISON
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Guiding Principle ◽  
The Social ◽  
Binary Oppositions ◽  
Train Of Thought ◽  
A Company

ABSTRACTThis article considers the intersection between polite manners and company in eighteenth-century England. Through the laughter of gentlemen, it makes a case for a concept of occasional politeness, which is intended to emphasize that polite comportment was only necessary on certain occasions. In particular, it was the level of familiarity shared by a company that determined what was considered appropriate. There was unease with laughter in polite sociability, yet contemporaries understood that polite prudence could be waived when men met together in friendly homosocial encounters. In these circumstances, there existed a tacit acceptance of looser manners that might be called ‘intimate bawdiness’, which had its origins in a renaissance humanist train of thought that valorized wit as the centrepiece of male sociability. This argument tempers the importance of politeness by stressing the social contexts for which it was – and was not – a guiding principle. Ultimately, it suggests that the category of company might be one way of rethinking eighteenth-century sociability in a more pluralistic fashion, which allows for contradictory practices to co-exist. As such, it moves towards breaking down the binary oppositions of polite and impolite, elite and popular, and theory and practice that have been imposed on the period.

The Discussion of Taste, from 1750 To 1770, and the New Trends in Literary Criticism

PMLA ◽  
1934 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 577-592 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Niles Hooker
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Standard Of Taste ◽  
The Aesthetic

The attempts to define and to arrive at a standard of taste lie at the heart of the aesthetic inquiries that were being carried on in eighteenth-century England. That such inquiries, by examining certain fundamental assumptions of traditional æsthetics, exerted an influence on the theory and practice of literary criticism, is a commonplace. But why and how this influence was felt has not been explained. Its importance can be gauged by the fact that within a period of twenty years several of the ablest minds in England and Scotland, including Burke, Hume, Hogarth, Reynolds, Kames, and Gerard—most of them interested in literary criticism—were focussed upon the problem of taste. It was not a coincidence that in the years from 1750 to 1770, when the search for a standard of taste was at its height, the old assumptions of literary criticism were crumbling and the new “romantic” principles were being set forth, sometimes timidly and sometimes boldly, by the Wartons, Young, Hurd, Kames, and many others. The relation between these two phenomena is the subject of this study.

An Alternative Approach to Enlightenment Age Lexicography: The Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce

2013 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 222-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sven Tarp ◽  
Theo J.D. Bothma
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Historical Experience ◽  
Broad Group ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
Age Of Enlightenment ◽  
Rich Content

AbstractThis article deals with lexicography from the Age of Enlightenment. The idea is not only to understand what was done but also to see if anything relevant to modern lexicography could be retrieved from this historical experience. With this objective, it will have a closer look at a specific eighteenth-century dictionary, viz. Malachy Postlethwayt’s Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce, published in four editions between 1751 and 1774. This work is selected because it is one of the most comprehensive and complex specialised dictionaries produced in that era. The article will first place the dictionary in its historical environment. It will then make a detailed study of its very rich content with a view to systematising the various types of lexicographical data included as well as the structures applied to assist the users when navigating through its highly complex pages. The analysis will show the great variety of items which Postlethwayt put into his dictionary in order to meet the multi-facetted needs of a broad group of users. In some aspects, the dictionary displays very advanced features which may even inspire modern lexicography, especially online lexicography. It seems that relevant lexicographical knowledge from the Age of Enlightenment was more or less forgotten due to the predominance of the erroneous idea that dictionaries are books of words and not of “things” as many eighteenth- century lexicographers described their products. The article therefore makes a call to recover the holistic Enlightenment Age vision of lexicography and re-integrate “dictionaries of things” into modern lexicographical theory and practice.

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