Eighteenth Century Research Articles

Anatomy of the Painting: The Study of the Serbian Orthodox Icon from the Turn of the Seventeenth to the Eighteenth Century

The paper presents the results of the multi-analytical study of the painting on a panel from the icon collection of the Gallery of Matica srpska museum in Novi Sad, Serbia. It is part of the research aiming to set the methodology for the museum’s database on artistic materials and techniques present in the collection. Computer tomography (CT) scanning was used to understand the structure of the wooden panel support. Ultraviolet (UV) and infrared (IC) imaging, as well as visible (VIS) macro photography, were used to study the paint layer, both the original part and restoration treatments, as well as the coat of varnish. Energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence (EDXRF) and Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy revealed the pigments, binders, and metal leaf, defining the artistic technique. Optical microscopy (OM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) were used to disclose the stratigraphy and composition of layers in the artwork. The multi-analytical approach confirmed that protein-based binder, gilding, silver leaf, and traditional pigments were used. The data gathered from this research are important for studying the artistic materials and techniques in icon production and defining the methodology setting for the museum collection’s databases as the reference material.

“Men who lived like women” in 18th century Alta California:<i> Coyas</i> / <i>Joyas</i>, <i>Cuút </i>or <i>Uluqi</i>, sodomites, hermaphrodites or amaricados?

Objective/context: This article analyzes testimonies of religious and military men, produced between 1770 and 1812, which give an account of Chumash, Juaneño and Yuma indigenous men of Alta California who were in the habit of dressing as women and joining them in the tasks corresponding to the feminine roles in these societies. The documents analyzed include two military diaries on the exploration expeditions and three chronicles of Franciscans who, starting in 1769, were in charge of founding missions in this area. Methodology: Through a gender perspective analysis, we examine the terms and categories used in the sources to describe and give meaning to the sexual roles and practices of the Coyas/Joyas, Cuút or Uluqi. Originality: The few works dedicated to the analysis of California Indians “in the habit of women” have focused on the missionary discourse or on the denunciation of the supposed “extermination” of dissident sexual practices. This paper argues that while the testimonies unanimously condemned these practices, they differed in the categories used to name and classify them and, thus, in the meaning attributed to them, which resulted in different legal and theological implications. Conclusions: The existence of men who dressed as women persisted, according to the sources analyzed, until the beginning of the 19th century in the region from the Gila and Colorado rivers to the Santa Barbara canal in northwestern New Spain. The categories of sodomy, amaricados or hermaphrodites, and male-female were understood under the single-sex model. And, although by the end of the eighteenth century, the principles of modern legal medicine were beginning to change, the meaning given to the Coyas/Joyas was linked to the justification of the advances or difficulties of colonization rather than to the scientific debates of the time.

HARPSICHORD IN THE SOUND PICTURE OF THE XX CENTURY MUSIC, EXEMPLIFIED BY F. POULENC’S СONCERT CHAMPETRE

At the beginning of the XX century harpsichord went through a major revival. The builders’, performers’, and composers’ approach to reconstruction of this instrument and its sound characteristics have created a whole new system of artistic allusions. That system was unexpected in the context of the instrument’s history, yet logical, considering the aesthetic of the time. Original harpsichord pieces of the early–20th-century composers commonly embody mechanical or automatic movements, imitate life of a big industrial city, show evil underworld forces and at the same time allude to baroque aesthetics, the interest to which triggered the revival of the instrument. Paradoxically, the harpsichord in the beginning of XX century is seen as something new and fresh, something able to replace piano, which had already passed its high point. Yet, the harpsichord revival started thanks to the new generation's interest to the music of XVII–XVIII century. Poulenc’s harpsichord concerto, known also as Concert champêtre, written for Wanda Landowska and her unique Pleyel harpsichord, is treated here as one of the brightest examples of the multiplicity of meanings of the harpsichord sound in early 20th century.

XVIII CENTURY AZERBAIJAN HISTORICAL REALITY AND LITERATURE

Throughout the entire history of mankind, literature has been a fact of the time of its creation. When we look at the issue both in a universal context and in a local one, we see approximately the same picture. Just as Homer is a fact of ancient Greece, the work of the genius Azerbaijani poet Nizami Ganjavi of the 12th century is considered to be the fact of the mighty Seljuk Empire, the state of the Atabays of Azerbaijan. Khagani Shirvani's literary heritage, dominated by rebellious and grievous motives, was a literary phenomenon caused by the state of the Shirvanshahs, the Akhsitan dynasty. The invasion of the Mongols, the invasion of Emir Timur, the period-specific manifestations of discontent against oppression and slavery, the spread of philanthropy and the phenomenon of Imadaddin Nasimi.. The work of Alishir Navai, the Uzbek-Chagatai poet and statesman of the 15th century, the author of the first “Khamsa” in Turkic, and the great Turkic culture, which was called the Timurid renaissance, were echoes of Huseyn Baygara's rule which lasted 37 years, in culture, science and literature. The establishment of the Safavid state of Azerbaijan in the XVI century and the fact that Azerbaijan remained the “metropolis and central province of the state” (Efendiyev, 2007: 11) throughout the century, the domestic and foreign policy has had a direct impact on the change of the direction of literature. The biggest event was the stabilization of the tradition of writing in the Azerbaijani language, the preference for the folk language, and the rapid development of ashug poetry. If in the literature of three centuries ago there was a palace splendor, then in the poetry of this period there is already a roar of battlefields, heroic motives surpass love poems, ashug poetry, which is closer to the people, and therefore has a lot of influence and propaganda power. The 18th century Azerbaijani literature is also a “mirror that shows the straight and the crooked” of its time. The article examines the most important events in the history of Azerbaijan of the XVIII century, their influence on the development of literature and features of their reflection in artistic works.

Number of Innovations in Kazakh Dictionaries of the Eighteenth Century in Comparison with Those of Other Turkic and Finno-Ugric Languages

The analysis of the dictionary published by P. S. Pallas makes it possible to clarify the chronology of changes in Kazakh dialects. The Kazakh dictionary of P. S. Pallas is important evidence that PTu *č was still preserved in the 18th century in Kazakh, and the changes were PTu *j-, *ĺ not finished yet. The dictionary presents only those innovative changes of consonants that are common for all Kipchak languages. It was also interesting that in the Kazakh language spoken in the late 18th century, only 1 sound change from Proto Turkic; in the Tatar dictionary 2 sound changes; in the Nogai dictionary 1 sound change; in the Hill Mari language 2 sound changes; in the South Khanty 5 sound changes; in the North Khanty 3 sound changes, and in the East Khanty 1 sound change.

Methodological Perspectives on Smuggling: The GDL-Prussia Borderlands in the Late Eighteenth Century

ABSTRACT In this article we explore the customs system of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL) along its border with Prussia in the late eighteenth century, using as primary sources four inspection reports submitted to the GDL’s Treasury Commission between 1788 and 1792. We focus primarily on the extent of smuggling practices, the state of the customs administration, and the amount of revenues collected from cross-border trade. Our research is an example of a spatial humanities project, and for this reason we are primarily interested in methodological questions. More specifically, we employ a mixed methods analytical framework that includes GIS mapping, qualitative spatial reasoning (QSR), and corpus linguistics to explore the borderlands of the GDL at multiple scales of analysis. We do so to illustrate how a mix of methods and tools can shed new light on the degree of control exerted by the GDL along its border with Prussia.

Vitiligo in the 19<sup>th</sup>-century dermatological works of Vincenzo Chiarugi, Robert Willan, Jean-Louis Alibert, and Ferdinand von Hebra

Vitiligo is an iconic dermatological pathology as its clinical manifestations indelibly mark the patient through the appearance of white spots all over the body. The oldest written testimonies referring to vitiligo are: the first texts of Ayurveda, the Ebers Papyrus and the Leviticus of the Old Testament. During the Roman Empire, the doctors Aulus Cornelius Celsus and Galen, respectively in the I and II centuries AD, were the first to describe this skin disease and their statements were used by all subsequent authors. Hieronymus Mercurialis in the XVI century, Joseph Jakob Ritter Plenck in the XVIII century and Vincenzo Chiarugi again in the XIX century based their writings on the references of the two Roman doctors. After centuries of scientific inaction in the XIX century, there was an exponential increase in dermatological studies and the medical-scientific works produced in this period laid the foundations of modern dermatology. The nineteenth-century texts of Robert Willan and Thomas Bateman, Jean-Louis Alibert, Ferdinand von Hebra, and Moriz Kaposi proved fundamental for the study of skin pathologies, including vitiligo. The nineteenth-century medical-scientific vision and approach to vitiligo is shown in this work through the presentation of direct quotes extrapolated from the most important works of the authors mentioned above, this served to historically contextualize the gradual progress of medical study regarding this skin pathology.

Designing deaf spaces: education, hygiene, and citizenship in nineteenth-century France

ABSTRACT This article examines the changing architectural environments of deaf education in the nineteenth century, taking the national institutes in Paris and Bordeaux as its main focus. Founded in the late eighteenth century and initially housed in government-expropriated properties, both schools underwent comprehensive renovation and reconstruction projects in the nineteenth century to emerge as modern educational spaces. Although these projects remain overlooked in the history of modern architecture, they were closely tied to contemporary discourses on education, hygiene, and citizenship. The renovation of the Paris Institute for Deaf-Mutes during the 1820s–30s engaged pressing questions about hygiene and social progress in the postrevolutionary era of national reconstruction. The architectural transformation of the Bordeaux Institute for Deaf-Mute Girls from the 1860s not only reflected the changing pedagogical focus from sign language to oralism; it was also imbricated in broader debates about laïcité and educational standardisation as France transitioned from empire to republic. Far from being marginal, these institutions functioned as key sites for working through notions of citizenship and national identity. Their histories reveal how architectural and material frameworks could serve to impose ideology on the one hand, and provide important grounds for the formation of a minority community on the other.

The Rise and Fall of Cullercoats as a Coal Exporting Port in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

Although the coal industry in the Northeast of England during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has been the subject of extensive study by historians over many years, most research has focussed mainly on larger centres of the coal trade such as Newcastle upon Tyne and Sunderland. Less well known is the significant contribution to coal exports made by some of the smaller communities and harbours along the Northumberland and Durham coasts. During the latter years of the seventeenth and early years of the eighteenth century the small coastal village of Cullercoats, just North of Tynemouth, became a significant coal and salt exporting port following the development of a colliery at nearby Whitley. Customs records of Cullercoats coal exports were included, as a Lesser Creek, in the Exchequer Port Books of Newcastle upon Tyne. Two Newcastle Exchequer Port Books containing complete records of Cullercoats coastal exports for 1702–1703 and overseas exports for 1698–1699 have survived, these include the names of the people and ships involved and provide a fascinating insight into the impact of the coal trade upon a small coastal port and it’s local community. Although its coal trade was relatively short lived, Cullercoats continued to thrive as a flourishing fishing port and during the nineteenth, twentieth and into the twenty-first centuries as a popular holiday resort frequented by many well-known and successful artists.

The translation of Saints and the Confucian discourse of sages in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century China: the examples of Alfonso Vagnone, Zhang Xingyao and Yan Mo

ABSTRACT Since the publication of Matteo Ricci's Tianzhu shiyi, sheng 聖 was commonly accepted as the translation of Catholic saints in China. A closer study, however, suggests that the use of sheng as the translation of saints was not an unquestioned process. In fact, the use of sheng diverged soon after the death of Matteo Ricci and disagreements continued at least into the early eighteenth century in the Catholic circle in China. This article seeks to deepen the understanding about the use of sheng as translation of saints in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century China. I focus on the examples of Alfonso Vagnone, Zhang Xingyao and Yan Mo, who represented three different approaches to sheng as the translation of saints in relation to sheng in reference to sages in the Confucian tradition. As we know, the Catholic Church eventually took the solution suggested by Yan Mo, who advocated referring to both Catholic saints and Confucian sages as sheng while maintaining a clear distinction between the two groups. But, before the decision was made in the twentieth century, there was much tension and complexity to translating the concept of Catholic saints as sheng.

Vigorous Leaps and Tragic Falls: Bodies in Distress in Kleist and Schiller

Comparing Schiller and Kleist, this article deals with a new pattern of movement that dynamizes dramatic action at the end of the eighteenth century. In Schiller’s tragedies, stage directions call for physical performances that both accelerate and interrupt the tragic course. More specifically, they unfold the tension between leaping and falling and explore the relationship between the concept of life and tragic downfall. Drawn to their tragic fates, Schiller’s heroes at the same time “jump up” and show a resiliency and elasticity that at least potentially escapes the tragic script. In Kleist, too, falling and leaping shape human destiny. But while in Schiller leaps and falls are opposed to each other, Kleist blends them into a single downward movement onto the stage of life, a movement that precedes dramatic action and defines our being in the world right from the start. Only in Penthesilea do leaping and jumping resist tragic forces and show that in the face of tragedy, creation continues.

Poetic Injustice: Blank-Verse Abolitionism and Cowper’s The Task

ABSTRACT The rise of abolitionist verse in the late 1780s coincided with the end of the period of dominance of the heroic couplet, which had by then been the preeminent literary form for the best part of 150 years. Taking as a case study William Cowper’s The Task of 1785—the poem of Cowper’s that gained him the attention of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1787—this essay considers some of the reasons why heroic couplets came to be treated with suspicion by politicized poets at the end of the eighteenth century, and thinks through some of the affordances of blank verse, in particular, that marked it out as attractive to abolitionists like Cowper. Blank verse, I argue, served to fold the distance between “here” and “there” (between, for instance, a Britain free of enslavement and the centrality of enslavement in its colonies); it produced disordered images that undermined the ordering logic of colonialism; and it reflected the fundamental difference Cowper came to discern between social connections and what he came to call “incorporation”—the unnatural grouping together of men under the banners of commercial entities and enterprises.

Psychological Thought in Educational Philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Background: This research attempted to investigate the role of the philosopher, social scientist, and educator Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the study of psychological, social and educational phenomena, and the interest of this thinker in a group of topics that are among the most important areas of psychological studies in the variety fields of psychology at the present time. Aim: The aim of this research is to show Rousseau's role in psychology in the eighteenth century, and to prove the participation of this philosopher in the emergence of psychology. Methods: The research relied on the descriptive and qualitative approach and the method of content analysis, which, by returning to several sources, related to the topic of research, tried to investigate the role of Rousseau and his participation in psychology. Results: The results of the research indicated to Rousseau's role and participation in the research of many psychological, social, philosophical, political and economic phenomena in the eighteenth century, which became an important basis for the manifestation, development of psychology in the coming stages. Conclusion: The study indicates the role of Rousseau in psychology and the participation of this philosopher in the emergence of this science.

‘Endless circumlocutions’: Speaking To and Away from the Point Before and After Melmoth the Wanderer

Circumlocution has been an important stylistic feature of the Gothic novel since its inception in the eighteenth century. Might this rhetorical feature be thought of in national or even geopolitical terms? Horace Walpole and Ann Radcliffe in the eighteenth century had linked circumlocution to a Shakespearean blending of comedy and tragedy that marked a distinctively British artistic sensibility against the constraints of French neo-classicism. However, Maturin’s use of the trope in Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) brought in new national and transnational inflections linked to the central character’s own ability to circle around the world and the presence of colonised others within the text. This article asks whether circumlocution after Maturin’s novel becomes an end in itself, a walking around the borders of speech and meaning that would appeal to later writers such as Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Baudelaire.

WITHDRAWN: Reconstructing the environmental impact of mining on mountain lakes

Mountain lakes are particularly fragile ecosystems undergoing important transformations associated with ongoing global change. However, the history of anthropogenic impacts on mountain lakes and their catchments is much longer, in many cases featuring millennia of summer pastoral farming. More recently, the growing demand for raw materials and energy linked to industrialization, particularly accelerated since the 19th century CE, meant a further increase in human impact on mountain areas. The Cantabrian Range (northern Spain) constitutes a paradigmatic case of southern European mountain range experiencing intense human impact during the past few millennia and particularly the past two centuries. Here, we have reconstructed the environmental dynamics of this area during the last millennium, with a particular focus on the impact of mining, based on the multidisciplinary analysis (sedimentology, biogeochemistry, magnetic susceptibility, diatoms, pollen, charcoal and dung fungal spores) of sediment cores from Lago de La Cueva (43°03′N, 6°06′W, 1550 m a.s.l.). Changing land use and climate have driven lake dynamics during the last centuries. A major fire-caused deforestation event dated to the late 15th century CE increased erosion and the frequency of intense runoff episodes, in the context of the wetter and colder Little Ice Age. The onset of iron mining activities in the catchment ca. 200 years ago had a strong impact on the lake. Sedimentation rates notably raised and mining waste containing hematite and potentially toxic elements (e.g. Fe, Co, As) was washed into the lake. Additionally, diatom assemblages showed that lake regulation since the early 20th century CE severely altered the natural hydrological regime introducing rapid seasonal lake-level oscillations and increased lakeshore erosion, water turbidity and nutrient loads. The recent environmental restoration, finished in 2006, has involved the re-deposition of large volumes of mine tailing. Although some mining wastewater still arrives into the lake because mine drainage is still active, restoration works have succeeded in reducing erosion rates and nutrient loads. Lower land-use intensity has also contributed to natural vegetation recovery, further diminishing erosion. This study illustrates the complex interactions between human activities (grazing, mining, hydropower) and climate change in defining mountain landscape shifts through time. Moreover, our results highlight the usefulness of paleolimnological research to quantitatively assess the effectiveness of lake restoration programs.

High levels of species' extirpation in an urban environment-A case study from Berlin, Germany, covering 1700-2023.

Species loss is highly scale-dependent, following the species-area relationship. We analysed spatio-temporal patterns of species' extirpation on a multitaxonomic level using Berlin, the capital city of Germany. Berlin is one of the largest cities in Europe and has experienced a strong urbanisation trend since the late nineteenth century. We expected species' extirpation to be exceptionally high due to the long history of urbanisation. Analysing 37 regional Red Lists of Threatened Plants, Animals and Fungi of Berlin (covering 9498 species), we found that 16% of species were extirpated, a rate 5.9 times higher than at the German scale and 47.1 times higher than at the European scale. Species' extirpation in Berlin is comparable to that of another German city with a similarly broad taxonomic coverage, but much higher than in regional areas with less human impact. The documentation of species' extirpation started in the eighteenth century and is well documented for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We found an average annual extirpation of 3.6 species in the nineteenth century, 9.6 species in the twentieth century and the same number of extirpated species as in the nineteenth century were documented in the twenty-first century, despite the much shorter time period. Our results showed that species' extirpation is higher at small than on large spatial scales, and might be negatively influenced by urbanisation, with different effects on different taxonomic groups and habitats. Over time, we found that species' extirpation is highest during periods of high human alterations and is negatively affected by the number of people living in the city. But, there is still a lack of data to decouple the size of the area and the human impact of urbanisation. However, cities might be suitable systems for studying species' extirpation processes due to their small scale and human impact.

Print culture and economic constraints: A quantitative analysis of book prices in eighteenth-century Britain

Who could afford books in the late early-modern period? We explore how prices related to the demand for books in eighteenth-century Britain by analysing extensive bibliographic and socio-economic data based on Bayesian statistics and machine learning. Our results quantify in financial terms the difficulty of buying print products faced by most British households in the eighteenth century, and how this related to the varying levels of supply across price segments. We found no evidence of the well known claim that legislation would have led to lower prices. The inadequate supply and high cost of books make it likely that only higher-income households bought them regularly from the primary market.

El láser en la restauración de hierros arqueológicos intensamente mineralizados: criterios y protocolo de intervención en el caso de las armas de una necrópolis Vaccea (Valladolid, España)

The aim of this paper is to present the conservation treatment of a set of iron weapons from the Vaccean necropolis of the Ruedas de Pintia (Padilla de Duero, Valladolid) dated between the 4th century BCE and 2nd century CE. The cremation and burial conditions have been very detrimental to their state of conservation, generating an intense corrosion and their complete mineralization. This left the weapons in a very fragile and brittle state that made their restoration difficult, since it implied the removal of hard crusts that were much adhered to the surface and, during this process, the pieces were in danger of further fragmentation. Our proposal is the combined use of traditional abrasive cleaning techniques together with the 1064nm Nd:YAG laser cleaning that, in addition to removing corrosion products, transforms the surface into magnetite, a stable iron oxide.

Beads of Alexandria: Non‐invasive analysis of glass from Roman, Late Antique and Islamic Kom el‐Dikka, Egypt

AbstractWritten sources indicate that Alexandria in Egypt was a leading producer of Roman glass. Furthermore, archaeological finds have provided evidence for the local production of drawn glass and gold‐in‐glass beads, which were distributed throughout the world. In this study, we present an analysis of the chemical composition of more than two hundred glass objects from the Roman (2nd–3rd/4th century ce) and Late Antique (4th/5th–7th century ce) glass bead workshops located at Kom el‐Dikka in Alexandria. This study is based on the results of portable X‐ray fluorescence (pXRF) analyses carried out on raw glass, bead semi‐products, products and waste from both periods. Additionally, the glass chemistry of some Islamic (8th–12th century ce) beads found at the site has been analysed.Despite the limitations of the method, the vast majority of samples exhibited compositions confirming their general dating and Egyptian origin. Remarkably, a single bead was made of high‐alumina glass and appeared to be an import from India, possibly a remnant of the Indo‐Pacific glass bead route that connected Red Sea ports and Europe in Late Antiquity. In addition, we offer a new analytical approach to the method that has potential to enhance the value of pXRF in the analysis of archaeological glass.

From Melmoth to Maqroll: The Wanderer in Latin America

From Roberto Jorge Payró’s Violines y toneles (1908) to Álvaro Mutis’s Maqroll novellas (1986–1993), Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) repeatedly resurfaces across Latin America’s shifting cultural landscapes of the twentieth century. This article argues that the text’s influence testifies to the malleability and dynamism of Gothic’s transnational transmission from the late eighteenth century to the present day. Drawing on the concept of ‘globalgothic’, it traces the elaborate nexus of cultural and political channels through which Melmoth circulated in Latin America. The mapping of Melmoth’s journey across Latin America reveals a world of gothic interchange that traverses and, at times, transcends national, temporal, and generic boundaries. In so doing, this article situates the text and its afterlives within an intricate yet uneven economy of colonial and postcolonial exchange where generic and national hierarchies are often mutually reinforcing but equally unstable. Ultimately, Melmoth’s Latin American afterlives evidence a dynamic interplay between nation, genre, and form in the globalgothic.