The Role of the Everyday Letter in the Development of Russian Sentimental Prose of the Late Eighteenth Century

1985 ◽  
Vol 80 (4) ◽  
pp. 884
Author(s):  
Nora Buhks
Author(s):  
Will Smiley

This chapter explores captives’ fates after their capture, all along the Ottoman land and maritime frontiers, arguing that this was largely determined by individuals’ value for ransom or sale. First this was a matter of localized customary law; then it became a matter of inter-imperial rules, the “Law of Ransom.” The chapter discusses the nature of slavery in the Ottoman Empire, emphasizing the role of elite households, and the varying prices for captives based on their individual characteristics. It shows that the Ottoman state participated in ransoming, buying, exploiting, and sometimes selling both female and male captives. The state particularly needed young men to row on its galleys, but this changed in the late eighteenth century as the fleet moved from oars to sails. The chapter then turns to ransom, showing that a captive’s ability to be ransomed, and value, depended on a variety of individualized factors.


2021 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 255-269
Author(s):  
Waïl S. Hassan

Abstract According to a well-known narrative, the concept of Weltliteratur and its academic correlative, the discipline of comparative literature, originated in Germany and France in the early nineteenth century, influenced by the spread of scientism and nationalism. But there is another genesis story that begins in the late eighteenth century in Spain and Italy, countries with histories entangled with the Arab presence in Europe during the medieval period. Emphasizing the role of Arabic in the formation of European literatures, Juan Andrés wrote the first comparative history of “all literature,” before the concepts of Weltliteratur and comparative literature gained currency. The divergence of the two genesis stories is the result of competing geopolitical interests, which determine which literatures enter into the sphere of comparison, on what terms, within which paradigms, and under what ideological and discursive conditions.


Author(s):  
Frederick Beiser

Hamann was one of the most important critics of the German Enlightenment or Aufklärung. He attacked the Aufklärung chiefly because it gave reason undue authority over faith. It misunderstood faith, which consists in an immediate personal experience, inaccessible to reason. The main fallacy of the Aufklärung was hypostasis, the reification of ideas, the artificial abstraction of reason from its social and historical context. Hamann stressed the social and historical dimension of reason, that it must be embodied in society, history and language. He also emphasized the pivotal role of language in the development of reason. The instrument and criterion of reason was language, whose only sanction was tradition and use. Hamann was a sharp critic of Kant, whose philosophy exemplified all the sins of the Aufklärung. Hamann attacked the critical philosophy for its purification of reason from experience, language and tradition. He also strongly objected to all its dualisms, which seemed arbitrary and artificial. The task of philosophy was to unify all the various functions of the mind, seeing reason, will and feeling as an indivisible whole. Although he was original and unorthodox, Hamann’s critique of reason should be placed within the tradition of Protestant nominalism. Hamann saw himself as a defender of Luther, whose reputation was on the wane in late eighteenth-century Germany. Hamann was also a founder of the Sturm und Drang, the late eighteenth-century literary movement which celebrated personal freedom and revolt. His aesthetics defended creative genius and the metaphysical powers of art. It marked a sharp break with the rationalism of the classical tradition and the empiricism of late eighteenth-century aesthetics. Hamann was a seminal influence upon Herder, Goethe, Jacobi, Friedrich Schlegel and Kierkegaard.


2020 ◽  
pp. 163-192
Author(s):  
Olga Sánchez-Kisielewska

This chapter explores the role of a musical pattern, the Romanesca schema, as a signifier of spiritual meanings in opera. It addresses the relationship between the Romanesca and the hymn topic and argues that the schema, semantically empty in its origins, acquired in the late eighteenth century connotations of ceremony, solemnity, alterity, and even transcendence. Several vignettes from operas by Haydn and Mozart illustrate how composers deployed the pattern in scenes depicting worship, prayers, and ritual actions. Beethoven’s Fidelio occupies the final section, a case study that shows the Romanesca interacting with other elements of the musical structure for expressive purposes. The chapter provides a novel interpretation of certain moments of the opera, suggesting that Beethoven relied on the sacred implications of the Romanesca—arguably available to historical listeners—to intensify the spiritual dimension of the drama.


2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-116
Author(s):  
Priyanka Khanna

This article maps the journey of the intimate companionship between a concubine and a Rajput ruler—Gulabrai and Vijay Singh, respectively—in the late eighteenth-century kingdom of Marwar in western Rajasthan. Based on hitherto unexamined local evidence, the article explores the ways in which a bond of friendship was constituted and unfolded in the everyday spheres of interaction between the concubine and the ruler. By turning attention to their evident emotions, such as of grief, trust, loyalty and love for each other, and shared partnership in spheres of religion and administration, this article suggests that friendship co-existed and overlapped with other forms of attachments in the overtly hierarchical relationship between the concubinage partners in focus. To emphasize the distinct form of this intimate companionship, the article also takes note of other forms of friendships that were centred on the agency of the concubine in the Rajput polity, and, in this way this article advances on the limited historical knowledge on concubinage in Rajput households and opens the possibility of including cross-sex associations in the discourse on friendship in early modern South Asia.


1995 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 551-574 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gillian Hamilton

Historians argue that in late eighteenth-century North Aerica, apprentices often ran away form their masters. Masters’ inability to write enforceable contracts, the argument goes, sparked the decline of traditional apprenticeships. This article addresses the issue of enforcement. I analyze an apprentice’s incentive to run away and the role of enforcement with detailed archival evidence form Montreal. These data cast doubt on the claim that masters were unable to construct enforceable contracts and call into question the severity of a runaway problem.


2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-149
Author(s):  
DAMIÁN MARTÍN GIL

ABSTRACTDuring the second half of the eighteenth century the Spanish guitar reached a level of popularity in France not equalled elsewhere. Among the various composers who contributed to the vogue for the instrument in this country, sources of the period refer to a certain Mr Vidal, a guitarist of Spanish origins who was regarded as one of the most important masters of the guitar in Europe. Despite multiple references to his musical activities no extensive study has yet been made, which leaves this figure only partially studied. In order to address this lacuna, this article reconstructs the life of this guitarist, placing his music in the environment in which he lived in order to obtain a clearer picture of the situation of the guitar and the role of Vidal as a composer, guitarist, publisher and teacher.


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