Félix Duban's Didactic Restoration of the Château de Blois: A History of France in Stone

1996 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 412-434
Author(s):  
Richard Witman ◽  
Richard Wittman

Félix Duban's restoration of the Château de Blois (1843-1870), one of the most ambitious and celebrated of the nineteenth century in France, has been neglected by historians more concerned with the restoration of medieval monuments and with the activity and influence of Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc. This study interprets some of Duban's archaeologically unjustified alterations to this complex monument in the light of the historicist architectural theory associated with Duban and the other Romantic architects Labrouste, Duc, and Vaudoyer. The château is an accretion of buildings from several centuries in a variety of styles, and Duban's restoration of the medieval segment, the Salle des États-Généraux, is shown to be particularly crucial. It emerges from this study that Duban was concerned to highlight specific, politically meaningful aspects of the long and rich history of the monument, and to illustrate the Romantics' views about the dependence of architectural style on the evolution of human society. Duban's restoration presents a sharp counterpoint to the idealist theories of restoration associated with Viollet-le-Duc, and shows that restoration could be a powerful polemical weapon. The reading presented here places the restored château in the thick of the theoretical conflicts that characterized contemporary architectural debate.

2017 ◽  
Vol 53 ◽  
pp. 376-388
Author(s):  
Esther Ruth Liu

In the discussion of the history of Christianity, the issue of translation is inevitably present, and yet the discipline of Translation Studies too often neglects the potential for insight that this rich history of translation can bring. This article seeks to reconcile these academic fields, allowing each to enlighten the other. In particular, by presenting the example of the nineteenth-century French Protestant missionary François Coillard (1834–1904) and his translation methods, the article posits colonial missionary narratives as useful not only for considering historical translation processes but also for reconsidering some of the assumptions of contemporary translation theory. By employing sources written by Coillard as well as those written about this ‘Livingstone français’, it challenges the assumptions prevalent in translation theory that the translator is invisible and that he works alone.


2014 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 755-771 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard A. Kaye

Much of the critical writingon Queer Theory and Sexuality Studies in a Victorian context over the last decade or so has been absorbing, exploring, complicating, and working under the burden of the influence of Michel Foucault's theoretical writings on erotic relations and identity. The first volume of Foucault'sThe History of Sexuality(1978), in fact, had begun with a gauntlet thrown down before Victorian Studies, a chapter-long critique of Steven Marcus'sThe Other Victorians(1966), a work that had offered an entirely new and at the time, quite bold avenue of exploring nineteenth-century culture – namely, through the pornographic imagination that Marcus taxonomized with precise, clinical flair as a “pornotopia” in which “all men . . . are always infinitely potent; all women fecundate with lust and flow inexhaustibly with sap or both. Everyone is always ready for everything” (276). In Foucault's telling, however, Marcus demonstrated a theoretically impoverished faith in Freudian models of “repression” in Marcus's examination of “underground” Victorian sexualities. It was Marcus's reliance on the “repressive fallacy,” his conviction that there existed a demarcated spatial and psychic Victorian counter-world thatThe History of Sexualityhad so forcefully undermined.


Clerk Maxwell’s investigation into the constitution and stability of Saturn’s Ring was based upon the fundamental supposition that the rings were composed of particles arranged in concentric circles. Although the particles could perform small oscillations about their mean positions, it is evident that the outline of the ring would be to all appearances circular. A line in Clerke’s ‘Popular History of Astronomy in the Nineteenth Century’ (page 299) suggests that some observers have regarded the outline of the ring as elliptical. It is therefore of interest to enquire under what conditions an elliptical ring could exist. The ellipse is a more general form than a circle. If, therefore, it can be shown that an elliptic ring is possible, any explanation of the origin of the rings must take account of this fact. In this paper a single ring of particles is examined. The actual Ring of Saturn probably consists of numerous rings, one within the other. By their gravitational attraction, each will affect the motions of the others. As a first approximation, however, it is sufficient to consider the case of a single ring.


Author(s):  
Anders Lundgren

The reception of Mendeleev’s periodic system in Sweden was not a dramatic episode. The system was accepted almost without discussion, but at the same time with no exclamation marks or any other outbursts of enthusiasm. There are but a few weak short-lived critical remarks. That was all. I will argue that the acceptance of the system had no overwhelming effect on chemical practice in Sweden. At most, it strengthened its characteristics. It is actually possible to argue that chemistry in Sweden was more essential for the periodic system than the other way around. My results might therefore suggest that we perhaps have to reevaluate the role of Mendeleev’s system in the history of chemistry. Chemistry in Sweden at the end of the nineteenth century can be characterized as a classifying science, with chemists very skilled in analysis, and as mainly an atheoretical science, which treated theories at most only as hypothesis—the slogan of many chemists being “facts persist, theories vanish.” Thanks to these characteristics, by the end of the nineteenth century, chemistry in Sweden had developed into, it must be said, a rather boring chemistry. This is obviously not to say that it is boring to study such a chemistry. Rather, it gives us an example of how everyday science, a part of science too often neglected but a part that constitutes the bulk of all science done, is carried out. One purpose of this study is to see how a theory, considered to be important in the history of chemistry, influenced everyday science. One might ask what happened when a daring chemistry met a boring chemistry. What happened when a theory, which had been created by a chemist who has been described as “not a laboratory chemist,” met an atheoretical experimental science of hard laboratory work and, as was said, the establishment of facts? Furthermore, could we learn something about the role of the periodic system per se from the study of such a meeting? Mendeleev’s system has often been considered important for teaching, and his attempts to write a textbook are often taken as the initial step in the chain of thoughts that led to the periodic system.


2018 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mahmood Vaezi

The application of the word ‘dialogue’ has a life as long as history and the old texts of religions are full of dialogues prevailing among different religious people. Reviewing and analysing the background and history of religious dialogue in the world, more than anything else, we understand the principle of necessity and position of dialogue as a common and public principle among religions, which in a broader view has been acceptable to most, if not all, religious people. This issue indicates that a spiritual and inherent sense is within the substantial core of all humans towards dialogue, which as a natural and inherent feature has been prevailing from the beginning of creation up to the present, and it will continue so. Firstly, employing the dialogue or saying and listening either to the inner self or the other people, when it is being formed with a commitment to human principles, will make human overpass a self-oriented attitude and recognition other persons. Secondly, it makes him/her listen and tolerate others’ views. Thirdly, it makes him/her be committed towards the principle of tolerance and recognise of the other(s) as well. On this basis, the continuity of the principle of dialogue and emphasis on this innate tradition will cause the spread of the culture of tolerance, peace and tranquillity. Furthermore, distancing from dialogue will lay down grounds for a self-oriented attitude, prejudice, pride, omission of others and violence in human society. On this case, while giving originality to dialogue, Islam clearly and firmly puts dialogue forth as a basic principle in human relations and a base to achieve the common ideals of human communities, which are discussed in detail in this article.


2016 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 385-407 ◽  
Author(s):  
AMBROGIO A. CAIANI

ABSTRACTThe recent bicentennial commemorations of the Napoleonic empire have witnessed a proliferation of new studies. Scholars now possess much more sophisticated conceptual tools than in past decades with which to gauge the problems faced by French imperial administrators throughout Europe. Well-trodden concepts, like centre/periphery or collaboration/resistance, have been reinvigorated by more sophisticated understandings of how rulers and ruled interacted in the early nineteenth century. This article argues that, while much progress has been made in understanding problems of ‘resistance’, there is more to be said about the other side of the same coin, namely: ‘collaboration’. Using the micro/local history of a scandal in Napoleonic Bologna, this article wishes to reaffirm that collaboration was an active agent that shaped, and often shook, the French imperial project. The biggest problem remained that, despite ‘good intentions’, collaborators sometimes simply did not collaborate with each other. After all, imperial clients were determined to benefit from the experience of empire. The centre was often submerged by local petty squabbles. This article will use a specific micro-history in Bologna to highlight the extent to which Napoleonic empire builders had to thread a fine line between the impracticalities of direct control and the dangers of ‘going native’.


1974 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Nicholls

One of the striking facts about the social and political history of Haiti from independence in 1804 to the present is the deep gulf separating the largely mulatto elite groups from the predominantly black masses. The war of the South in 1799 between Toussaint and Rigaud, and the conflicts between Christophe and Pétion, while not primarily caused by color factors, were reinforced by suspicions and hostilities between black and mulatto, with each group accusing the other of prejudice and discrimination. Politics in the rest of the nineteenth century can generally be seen as a tussle between a mulatto elite centered in the capital and in the cities of the South, on the one hand, and a small black elite often in alliance with army leaders and peasant irregulars, on the other. In the years following 1867 these groups formalized themselves into a largely mulatto Liberal Party, and a preponderantly black National Party.


1930 ◽  
Vol 76 (315) ◽  
pp. 764-771
Author(s):  
A. Wohlgemuth

Psychology was for centuries a part of philosophy, the happy, undisputed hunting-ground of the speculative metaphysician. With the beginning of the nineteenth century a new era dawned gradually for psychology. Anatomists, physiologists and physicists began to invade this reserve of the metaphysician. These early attempts of Gall and Spurzheim, Johannes Müller, E. H. Weber, Du Bois Reymond, Helmholtz, Lotze, Fechner, Thomas Young and many others are too well known to detain us. They lead up to the work of Wilhelm Wundt and the establishment of psychology as one of the natural sciences, from speculation without facts to speculation allied with experiment. However, as usually happens, the swing of the pendulum goes from one extreme to the other. For whilst the metaphysical psychologist would ignore physiology and neurology, maintaining that what is not itself a phase of consciousness cannot be used to explain consciousness, some of the physiological psychologists would overshoot the mark and attempt a psychology without consciousness. Thus we find the behaviourists (Watson) and the objective psychologists (Bechterew). Pavlov appears to belong to the latter school. But as Prof. Brett, in his History of Psychology, rightly says: “Modern psychology lies between two points: it emerges from anatomy and physiology, and terminates in a region where those sciences cease to guide.”


1996 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 411-433 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy L. Green

The garment industry is a good example of the relative autonomy of academic fields. Two histories of the industry are being written simultaneously but separately. One is a history of women; the other, a history of immigrants. Two types of workers have indeed come to the sweatshops, and each have had distinct reasons for doing so. The nineteenth century saw the shift from tailormade to ready-made garments, from the (hand-held) needle to the sewing machine, from tailors and dressmakers to garment workers, and from more to less skill in the making of clothing. The ready-to-wear revolution was also accompanied by a global shift in the sewing labor force, from men to women and from natives to immigrants. The story is a complicated one, yet one which has most often been told in parallel fashion.


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