18th Century British Literature

Nous tenterons donc ici, sans prétention à l’exhaustivité, de montrer en quoi les voyageurs sont des comparatistes par nature, comment cela se transmet dans les relations qui émergent de leurs déplacements, et en quoi il est impératif d’utiliser une méthode comparative pour l’étude de leurs écrits.

I – De l’expérience à l’écriture du voyage : « donner à
comparer »

II – Les figures de l’analogie : clefs de la relation de voyage

III – La méthode comparative : une évidence ?

Pour citer cet article : FILET Jérémy, « Vers un comparatisme des écrits du déplacement ? Littérature et voyageurs comparatistes », Cahiers Tocqueville des Jeunes Chercheurs, Vol. 2, n°1, avril 2020, p. 21-28.

Eighteenth-century Britain saw the emergence of a new poetic genre, the “work” poem which took various forms of labor as its subject and was often written by laborers themselves. Several of these working class poets found their lives transformed due to the success of their verse (Stephen Duck most famously), but most faded into literary obscurity. However, a substantial body of “work” poems was produced by a diverse group of poets throughout the century, each manifesting divergent concerns and attitudes about the experience of work. This chapter assesses the formal connections uniting this poetic genre, particularly the frequent use of such literary devices as ironic distancing, litotes, and mock-georgic description. Instead of solely classifying “work” poems on the basis of their subject matter, this chapter demonstrates that such poetry (indeed the genre itself) lends itself to sophisticated literary techniques often associated with other poetic genres. In this fashion the full measure of eighteenth-century working class poetry can be evaluated more fairly, particularly by analyzing the formation of a new genre designed expressly by the poets themselves. The chapter ultimately seeks to demonstrate the connectedness, rather than the alienation, of working class poetry to the eighteenth-century British poetic tradition.

Infanticide seems to dominate literature from the beginning. It has been observed that it started since the use of the Bible. Why does it concern the writers so much? This has to be analyzed here. It refers to any kind of murder of a small infant, even if it is supported by the father and other kin. The use of new terms neonaticide and prolicide have generated throughout the history of infanticide. However murdering of an older child was much complex than the murder of a new born. The reasons behind this discussion are that the historians of England language have avoided using the clear language for the broader study of the infanticide. The historians who work in this field don't prefer to use the exact term "infanticide" as their work has been limited to a particular sphere of neonaticide. Myths seem to be recurrent in this study of infanticide. They are known to be collective and communal and they can be considered to be universal. Greek myths dominate this topic. There are images and patterns which occur in literature in spite of time and place and hence these are called archetypes or archetypal patterns. The use of scapegoat has also been used to describe infanticide.

This is a paper on how I have developed a pedagogy  and what that is to teach retired adults in two Oscher Institutes of Lifelong Learning. I explain the history, development, operation, goals and kinds of people who belong to these. Finally I tell of my experiences teaching courses in the 18th century at both places.

Eliza Haywood’s short novella Fantomina is concerned with the fluidity of sexual and social identity when it is removed from the influence of the domestic “home.”  Through the removal of her socially-positioned “person,” the title character creates a sexual utopia for herself which evades the mundaneness of the monogamous, male-controlled marriage state.  Fantomina assumes a variety of social identities and, through these new “bodies,” escapes from the restrictions of her position and family.  While not a traditional utopia in the sense of a collective, Haywood’s Fantomina offers the possibility of an individual who can elude the domestic by rejecting a singular self.

This individual female utopia, however, is ultimately unstable, as Fantomina sustains her personal freedom until she is compromised by her prioritizing sexual relations. Alternate public personas can be continually invented, but it is impossible for a woman to deny her specific reproductive capability.  Betrayed by her own body, Fantomina’s sexual utopia fails when she is discovered to be pregnant and her mother forces her back into the typical realm of “home” (and then, interestingly, into the wholly non-sexual community of the cloister).  While Haywood’s text offers an interesting prospect of a self-centered, female sexual utopia, it also negates the social threat by bringing its utopia back under the domestic control of the reproductive, biological body.

It is the purpose of this essay to demonstrate that across her oeuvre Charlotte Smith writes out of a politically radical post-colonial and woman-centered perspective. She shows herself to be fully aware of this when in Marchmont (1796), her hero describes how writers are frightened from writing truths lest they be harassed, lose a position, be dispossessed of where they live, or end in prison and says he is censoring himself. 1 Nevertheless, in crucially charged reflections and scenes throughout her verse and fiction, she dramatizes the tragic price, losses, struggles, and also compromises that allow some of her characters to achieve a modest success (and some not), in the context of situations created by a local unqualified patriarchal patronage systems and global militaristic capitalism. Her angle is particular: the stories in verse as well as prose that she tells over and over again are the direct result of her own experience of an abusive semi-coerced marriage, and an experience of motherhood as an ambitious loving woman of nine surviving children under the constraints of abysmal poverty and ostracism. 2 In her work most female characters because of their gender and males who lack access to an adequate estate and/or effective patronage connections ricochet across landscapes as they flee punitive arrangements, seek substantially to improve their economic conditions and status, or enact socially-sanctioned (sometimes under pressure) acts of self-destruction. The art that presents this matter is most fully realized in subjectively told, secondary, sometimes tertiary stories (as narrated story emerges from narrated story), evasive narratives of an immediate or long-ago past whose events often occurred in disparate places. The separations themselves cause painful estrangements between characters; that the characters don't even know of one another's

From the late 1750s British writers, merchants and diplomats responded to trade tensions with China by imagining how cross-cultural forms of civility might bridge the political divides between the two empires, allowing the trade demands of the East India Company to be granted as tokens of Chinese friendship. This article explores the development of this cosmopolitan and idealising perspective on Anglo-Chinese relations in two related literary genres: philosophical contes imagining Chinese travellers in England (by Oliver Goldsmith, Charles Johnstone and Horace Walpole) and travel narratives of Canton and Beijing (by Charles-Frederick Noble and George Macartney).

Promenade, se promener, déambuler, errer, se déplacer, se balader, circuler, flâner, marcher ; autant de mots que l’on utilise à loisir comme synonymes, mais qui, à y regarder de plus près, rendent compte de réalités et de déterminants bien différents. Comprendre un mot, et qui plus est dans une époque antérieure, c’est surtout tâcher d’habiller le vocable de référents historiques, de le remettre dans son contexte pour voir se dégager une subtilité étymologique qui renvoie à une réalité. Le déplacement dans l’espace urbain a une longue histoire, il existe une généalogie entre les substantifs français évoqués plus haut. Plutôt qu’une union par des liens synonymiques, il semble qu’il s’agisse d’une hiérarchie familiale séparée par des générations successives. Par exemple, la promenade engendrerait la flânerie qui à son tour engendrerait la ballade et l’errance. Il nous manque, à ce jour, de grandes monographies sur l’histoire des déplacements qui permettraient de tracer d’un geste sûr et précis une ligne entre ces mots, un peu comme un dessin à numéro dont l’image finale ne se révèle que quand le dessinateur a relié tous les points et prend de la distance par rapport à son ouvrage.

À télécharger gratuitement: http://difusion.academiewb.be/vufind/Record/ULB-DIPOT:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/97995/Holdings

À

Mysticism firstly is a belief or a state of spiritual experience; hence, mystical experience as the key element of mysticism. Its main aim is to unify with the Absolute/ God. Since 19th century (the period of which “Daffodils” was published - 1807), the meaning of mysticism was extensively emphasize on individual experience as a defense against
growing rationalism of Western society.

Liberalism is a term employed in a dizzying variety of ways across the humanities and social sciences. This essay seeks to reframe how the liberal tradition is understood. I start by delineating different types of response – prescriptive, comprehensive, explanatory – that are frequently conflated in answering the question “what is liberalism?” I then discuss assorted methodological strategies employed in the existing literature: after rejecting “stipulative” and “canonical” approaches, I outline a contextualist alternative. On this (comprehensive) account, liberalism is best characterised as the sum of the arguments that have been classified as liberal, and recognised as such by other self-proclaimed liberals, over time. In the remainder of the article I present an historical analysis of shifts in the meaning of liberalism in Anglo-American political thought between 1850 and 1950, focusing in particular on how John Locke came to be seen as a liberal. I also explore the emergence of the category of "liberal democracy". I argue that the scope of the liberal tradition was massively expanded during the middle decades of the twentieth century, such that it came to be seen by many as the constitutive ideology of the West. This capacious (and deeply confusing) understanding of liberalism was produced by a conjunction of the ideological wars fought against “totalitarianism” and assorted developments in the social sciences. Today we both inherit and inhabit it.

Just how prescient was Edmund Burke about the problems of modern democracy?  Written for the bicentenary of his death in 1797, this book argues that he had a remarkable grasp of the shortcomings of the ideas promoted by the French Revolution, which still dominate much of our political thinking.  "As for the rights of man, I did implore the Director General to leave them alone" -- T. S. Eliot to Mrs. J. J. Hawkes of UNESCO, 22 Oct 1947.

This essay examines the different answers that British moralists gave to the question ‘what does virtue consist in?’ Rather than as a royal road to present-day views in ethics, their answers are best understood when considered against the background of early modern natural law theories and their projected metaphysics of morals. The emerging ‘science of morality’ dealt with the metaphysical problem of determining what sort of thing virtue is. Considered from this vantage point, the British moralists struggled with the problem of deciding whether moral concepts signify laws of nature, rational drives in human beings, irrational drives in human beings, volitions of a legislator, or social institutions. British moral philosophies in the eighteenth century can be divided up according to whether they defended the thesis that moral qualities are artificial, the thesis that they are part of nature, or the thesis that they are the product of historical experience.

In his poem, “The Chimney Sweeper: Innocence” and “The Chimney Sweeper: Experience” Blake makes a scalding commentary about societal injustice by representing the plight of poor children who are forced to work as chimney sweeps by juxtaposing two contrary states – one in the innocent, pastoral world of  childhood and the other in the adult world of cognizance.

The histories of moral concern for animals and literary sentimentalism are intertwined, yet the reasons for this connection have been little understood. This study examines the reasons for the growth of compassion for animals in late eighteenth-century British literature and culture and the influence of sentimental poetics on the way human and animal relationships came to be understood. Additionally, I suggest that some of the questions asked about animals in the eighteenth century are now being reconsidered in the field of Animal Studies and that modern thinking about human and animal relationships bears the influence of eighteenth-century sentimentalism in both the importance placed on sympathetic imagination and, surprisingly, our disapproval of sentimentality. The Introduction considers the rise and fall of sentimental compassion for animals in eighteenth-century Britain and examines the iconic importance of the animal encounters in Laurence Sterne's novels for eighteenth-century readers and how they epitomized the notion of sensibility for admirers and detractors. I then propose an approach to understanding the role of animals in sentimentalism that draws on Derrida's work on the gift and the response of the animal and appraise current attitudes toward sentimentality in the field of Animal Studies. Chapter 1 shows how Sterne used animal encounters to explore the dynamics of sympathetic imagination and examines how the conceptual malleability of animals and their resistance to interpretation bear on the novel's analysis of personal identity and narrative authority. Chapter 2 analyzes the major tropes of sentimental animal representation in a wide array of eighteenth-century texts, with a focus on understanding how personification and apostrophe shape the dynamics of the poetic encounter with the animal. Chapter 3 considers how William Blake's writings on animals may be understood in the context of sentimentalism and the ways in which Blake addressed questions about our ethical relations with other species. Chapter 4 outlines the intellectual context of eighteenth-century concern for animals with a focus on how moral philosophy and medical discourse established models of the mind-body relationship conducive to questioning the boundary between human and animal.

Cet article étudie la résurgence de deux types de romans familiaux dans le roman du 18e siècle, français et anglais: l'un remonte à Aristote, l'autre à Platon. Pour l'auteur de la Poétique, les deux principaux effets que doit produire le spectacle dramatique sont la frayeur et la pitié. Ceux-ci s’induisent le mieux d’événements conflictuels situés au sein du cadre de la famille. L’intrigue qui se trouve au centre de cette scène familiale doit s’organiser autour de trois concepts-clefs: la reconnaissance, la péripétie et l’effet violent.

Le second roman familial se trouve chez Platon. Le dialogue Phèdre contient une fable où l’écriture est le produit d’un Dieu, « père de l’écriture », son inventeur. En même temps, le texte écrit est comme un fils, abandonné, du scripteur qui en est le « père ». Une fois écrit, le texte devient comme un enfant abandonné, dont le sort est incertain.

Les deux romans familiaux - d’Aristote et de Platon - qui se trouvent à la base de la littérature et de la critique littéraire occidentales se rapportent l’un et l’autre au problème fondamental de la “reconnaissance”, articulé sur un double plan du fond (par Aristote) et de la forme (par Platon). Dans le roman familial platonicien, la « reconnaissance » se traduit comme la prise en charge par un lecteur d’un texte écrit, abandonné par son scripteur. Ou en termes métaphoriques : le roman familial platonicien met en scène un père adoptif-lecteur adoptant un enfant-écriture abandonné par son père-scripteur.

Frances Burney's novel Evelina follows a young woman through a series of mortifying social interactions, all of which point to a layered concept of women's agency and the popular perceptions of autonomy during the eighteenth century. Women's agency in Evelina can be classified as physical agency, emotional agency, or elite agency. Each form of agency is then characterized by the female characters of the lower, middle, or upper classes within the novel. Burney's uncouth characterization of the lower classes corresponds with physical agency, or the physical ability to create agency outside of social expectations, while elite agency allows upper-class and aristocratic women to act as they wish without public censure. Middle-class Evelina's emotional agency, accessible to readers through the epistolary format of the novel, relies on her understanding of propriety, sensibilities, and interpersonal connections as a means of navigating social situations and class mobility. Burney's tiered construction of women's agency reinforces the importance of sensibility and emotional honesty across highly gendered class lines.

Detailed, chronological study which places Masonically-related British literature in international context of Jacobite-Hanoverian, Tory-Whig, nationalist-imperialist political context (from 1680s to 1750s, with ramifications into the revolutionary 1780s). New archival material on Swift, Pope, Arbuthnot, Wharton, Derwentwater, Toland, Fielding, Locke, Hume, and many others.

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, previously published as a travel narrative in 1726, revolves around the adventurous life of a ship's surgeon, Lemuel Gulliver. Throughout the book, Swift highly mocks and criticizes the follies of the people in power in various parts of England. Swift was extremely critical of the Enlightenment philosophers and scientists as they laid much emphasis on scientific knowledge and less on practicality. Jenny Mezciems rightly points out, 'The purpose of Swift's works was to mock practices and attitudes which he abhorred.' The imagery and symbolism throughout the book represent the irony and corruption of the English System.

As Byron rose to fame he kept on developing his ideal protagonist. Though Childe Harold is the work that notably brought him overnight success, it is only the template of what is to be known as the Byronic Hero. With the personal experiences that accompanied these years of fame, Byron grew as not only an author but an individual, which has been greatly reflected in his work. The Byronic hero has been observed in Byron’s Turkish Tales, such as The Giaour, The Corsair, and Lara. But, though most of Byron’s work is extremely reflective, it is also extremely observative, in a sense that he shows the various cultures he has passed through in not only his background stories, settings, and secondary characters, but also through some of his protagonists such as Selim in The Bride of Abydos.

Jane Austen'in ilk yayımlanan romanı, temel izleğinde aşk bulunan Sense and Sensebility mektup formatında yazılmıştır. Farklı dillere çevirisi yapılmış olan roman gerek başlığı gerekse anlatı yapısıyla sosyal, ekonomik, düşünsel, ahlaki ve etik açıdan İngiliz toplumunun normlarını yansıtmaktadır. Bu ölçütler, kadının gerek ailevi gerekse toplumsal yaşam içinde üstlendiği rolleri ve bu rollerin işlevini ve konumunu sergilemesi bakımından oldukça önemlidir. Bu çalışmada söz konusu roman, anlatı yapısına doğrudan yerleştirilen veya dolaylı olarak sızdırılan feminist imgeler aracılığıyla okunmaya çalışılacaktır. İngiliz Yazını klasiklerinden biri olarak değerlendirilen roman özellikle de yazıldığı dönem itibariyle önemli feminist düşünceler içermekte, kadına karşı bakış açısı ve ona yüklenen roller bakımından farklı açılımlar yapmaktadır. Romanı bu imgeler ışığında okumak romanın yazıldığı dönem koşulları ve toplum yapısı hakkında bilgilendirici olmasının yanında değişen kadın algısının yansımalarını göstermesi bakımından da günümüz yazın çalışmalarına model olacak niteliklere sahiptir. Çalışmada feminist yöntembilim ilkeleri bağlamında romanda yer alan evlilik, miras, aile kavramlarının toplumsal cinsiyet algısıyla kazandıkları anlamlar bulgulanmaya çalışılmıştır. Bu algıda özellikle kadının konumu örtük ya da açık biçimde içerdikleri göndermeler bakımından değerlendirilmiştir. Romanın ana eksenini kadın ve kadınlık olgusu oluşturduğundan yapıtın anlamsal ve biçimsel özellikleri feminist imgelerle değerlendirilecektir. Bu yüzden romanı feminist imgeler ışığında okumak geniş bir bakış açısı sunmayı hedeflemektedir.

This research paper aims to explore the topic of paternalism as it appears in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) in relation to the novel’s themes of individualism, spiritual awakening, and survival. The analysis will therefore trace the dynamic of Crusoe’s paternal relationships with other characters in the novel. The idea of paternalism is thus manifested emphatically through Crusoe’s father, metaphorically through God, and subjectively through Crusoe himself yet in each case it has a specific function for the protagonist as related to the themes of the novel.