scholarly journals „Varla er til ófrýniligri sjón...“

Ritið ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 51-73
Author(s):  
Marion Lerner
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Basic Knowledge ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Aesthetic Judgement ◽  
European Cities ◽  
Travel Writings ◽  
The City ◽  
Systematic Exposition

This article examines Tómas Sæmundsson’s travel writings from his tour of Europe in the early nineteenth century. Sæmundsson visited various cities and then wrote his Ferðabók, along with a detailed introduction and several letters written to family and friends. These travel writings are examined to reveal how Sæmundsson express-es himself about the European cities he visited. How does he present these cities to his nineteenth-century Icelandic readers? How does he attempt to explain the role of the city and describe daily life in the cities? What sort of imagery does he employ to stimulate his readers’ interest and imagination?As the study demonstrates, Sæmundsson’s writings contain various observations on what characterized the cities he visited, what he found fascinating, and what he found repugnant. He was unafraid to pass aesthetic judgement on the different places and neighborhoods and to declare them to be beautiful or ugly. As a result of the article’s analysis and systematic exposition of Sæmundsson’s evaluations, it becomes evident that the young Icelandic academic had already acquired some basic knowledge of urban planning, and that he was brave enough to envision a possible layout for Iceland’s capital city, Reykjavik.

From Caesarea to Athens: Greek Revival Edinburgh and the Question of Scottish Identity within the Unionist State

2001 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 136-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Lowrey
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sir Walter Scott ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
New Town ◽  
The North ◽  
Greek Revival ◽  
Greek Architecture ◽  
The City

In the early nineteenth century, the city of Edinburgh cultivated a reputation as "the Athens of the North." The paper explores the architectural aspects of this in relation to the city's sense of its own identity. It traces the idea of Edinburgh as a "modern Athens" back to the eighteenth century, when the connotations were cultural, intellectual, and topographical rather than architectural. With the emergence of the Greek revival, however, Edinburgh began actively to construct an image of classical Greece on the hilltops and in the streets of the expanding city. It is argued that the Athenian identity of Edinburgh should be viewed as the culmination of a series of developments dating back to the Act of Union between the Scottish and English Parliaments in 1707. As a result, Edinburgh lost its status as a capital city and struggled to reassert itself against the stronger economy of the south. Almost inevitably, the northern capital had to redefine itself in relation to London, the English and British capital. The major developments of Edinburgh in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, including the New Town and the urban proposals of Robert Adam, are interpreted in this light. As the eighteenth century progressed, the city grew more confident and by the early nineteenth century had settled upon its role within the Union and within the empire, which was that of cultural capital as a counterbalance to London, the political capital. The architectural culmination of the process of the redefinition of Edinburgh, however, coincided with the emergence of another mythology of Scottish identity, as seen through the Romantic vision of Sir Walter Scott. It implied a quite different, indigenous architecture that later found its expression in the Scots Baronial style. It is argued here, however, that duality does not contradict the idea of Edinburgh as Athens, nor, more generally, does it sit uneasily with the Scottish predilection for Greek architecture, but rather that it encapsulates the very essence of Scottish national identity: both proudly Scots and British.

Natural History in Edinburgh, 1779–1832

2019 ◽  
pp. 37-74
Author(s):  
Bill Jenkins
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The University ◽  
John Walker ◽  
The City

This chapter focuses in on Edinburgh’s natural history circles in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. First it examines the chair of natural history at the University and the work of its two incumbents during this period, John Walker and Robert Jameson, before turning to natural history in the extra-mural anatomy schools. These were the site of some of the boldest thinkers on evolutionary themes in early nineteenth-century Britain. Edinburgh was also the home of a number of important natural history societies in this period, for example, the Plinian and Wernerian Natural History Societies. These served as lively forums for the discussion of the latest developments and theories. This chapter will explore the nature and role of these societies, before finally turning the spotlight on the scientific and natural history journals published in the city, such as the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal and the Edinburgh Journal of Science.

‘Otherwise in London’ or, the ‘Essence of Things’: Modernity and Estrangement in the Nineteenth-Century Cityscape

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-35
Author(s):  
Julian Wolfreys
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
William Wordsworth ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Thomas De Quincey ◽  
Urban Centre ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Urban Representation ◽  
Robert Southey ◽  
The World ◽  
The City

Writers of the early nineteenth century sought to find new ways of writing about the urban landscape when first confronted with the phenomena of London. The very nature of London's rapid growth, its unprecedented scale, and its mere difference from any other urban centre throughout the world marked it out as demanding a different register in prose and poetry. The condition of writing the city, of inventing a new writing for a new experience is explored by familiar texts of urban representation such as by Thomas De Quincey and William Wordsworth, as well as through less widely read authors such as Sarah Green, Pierce Egan, and Robert Southey, particularly his fictional Letters from England.

The National and the Universal

2020 ◽  
pp. 368-386
Author(s):  
Sarah Collins
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Johann Gottfried Herder ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
The World ◽  
Respective Treatment ◽  
History Of

This chapter examines the continuities between the categories of the “national” and the “universal” in the nineteenth century. It construes these categories as interrelated efforts to create a “world” on various scales. The chapter explores the perceived role of music as a world-making medium within these discourses. It argues that the increased exposure to cultural difference and the interpretation of that cultural difference as distant in time and space shaped a conception of “humanity” in terms of a universal history of world cultures. The chapter reexamines those early nineteenth-century thinkers whose work became inextricably linked with the rise of exclusivist notions of nationalism in the late nineteenth century, such as Johann Gottfried Herder and John Stuart Mill. It draws from their respective treatment of music to recover their early commitment to universalizable principles and their view that the “world” is something that must be actively created rather than empirically observed.

The Melville Monument and the Shaping of the Scottish Metropolis

2018 ◽  
Vol 61 ◽  
pp. 105-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clarisse Godard Desmarest
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Napoleonic Wars ◽  
Grid Pattern ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
New Town ◽  
National Monument ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The City

AbstractThe Melville Monument, which stands at the centre of St Andrew's Square in Edinburgh, was erected between 1821 and 1823 in memory of the Tory statesman Henry Dundas, first Viscount Melville (1742–1811). The design for the monument, more than 150 ft tall, was provided by William Burn (1789–1870). The 15 ft statue of Dundas that stands on top, added in 1827, was carved by Robert Forrest (1789–1852), a Scottish sculptor from Lanarkshire, from a design by Francis Chantrey (1781–1841). The Melville Monument, imperial in character and context, is part of a series of highly visible monuments built in Edinburgh in the early nineteenth century to celebrate such figures as Horatio Nelson, Robert Burns, William Pitt, King George IV and the dead of the Napoleonic wars (National Monument). This article examines the commission and construction of the Melville Monument, and analyses the choice and significance of St Andrew's Square as a locus for commemoration. The monument is shown to be part of an emerging commitment to enhance the more picturesque qualities of the city, a reaction against the exaggerated formality of the first New Town and its grid pattern.

Geopolitics of Comparison: World Literature Avant la Lettre

2021 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 255-269
Author(s):  
Waïl S. Hassan
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Comparative Literature ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
History Of

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.

The Battle of Fredericksburg

2021 ◽  
pp. 316-330
Author(s):  
Barton A. Myers
Keyword(s):  
Capital City ◽  
Union Army ◽  
Direct Role ◽  
Army Of Northern Virginia ◽  
Army Of The Potomac ◽  
Combat Casualties ◽  
Military Campaign ◽  
The City ◽  
The Town

The December 13, 1862, Battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia, marked the defeat of Union Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside’s Army of the Potomac by Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, an important setback for the Union cause and military effort to seize the Confederate capital city of Richmond, Virginia. The battle and military campaign preceding it, which occurred primarily along the Rappahannock River at the city of Fredericksburg and in adjacent Stafford and Spotsylvania counties, was the most lopsided victory the Army of Northern Virginia achieved during the American Civil War, with the Union Army sustaining combat casualties equivalent to more than double those suffered by Confederates. The campaign also saw the use of urban combat, military occupation, and the direct role of civilians at the center of the November and December military maneuvers around the city, which was positioned approximately equidistant between Washington, D.C., and Richmond. Principal battle locations included the Confederate position of Lt. Gen. James Longstreet’s corps on Marye’s Heights behind the city, the Union artillery position on Stafford Heights, the position of Lt. Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s Confederate corps at Prospect Hill south of the city of Fredericksburg, and the Rappahannock River itself, which was crossed only after Union engineers built a pontoon bridge under fire. The campaign is noted for Union Army shelling of the city itself as a military position, the failed, multiwave Union infantry assaults against fortified positions, and the destruction of property on December 12 as the town itself was sacked.

The Legacy of the ‘Edinburgh Lamarckians’

2019 ◽  
pp. 156-195
Author(s):  
Bill Jenkins
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Medical Student ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

The penultimate chapter looks at the longer-term impact of the efflorescence of evolutionary speculation in early-nineteenth-century Edinburgh on later generations of natural historians. First it examines the evangelical reaction against progressive models of the history of life and its role in the eclipse of the ‘Edinburgh Lamarckians.’ Next it examines to the evolutionary theory proposed by Robert Chambers in his anonymously published Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844) to assess its possible debt to the Edinburgh transformists of the 1820s and 1830s. Finally it turns to the important question of the possible influence of the ‘Edinburgh Lamarckians’ on Charles Darwin during his time as a medical student in Edinburgh in the years 1825 to 1827, during which period he rubbed shoulders with many of the key proponents of evolutionary ideas in the city.

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