English Grand Research Articles

La búsqueda del Paraíso Perdido, narrativas del turismo

Though tourism, for popular parlance, seems to be a naive activity, enrooted in superfluous explorations, which do not need further attention, the fact is that anthropology shows another thing. Tourism should be defined as a rite of passage where there are some crises of identity is based on two pillars. First and foremost, the quest of lost-paradise situates the subject before its needs to return to a safe exemplary centre where all needs are fulfilled. Secondly, the quest for purification is equaled to the logic of revitalization. The cycle of work and leisure are alternated indefinitely in the same way to sins and forgiveness. Last but not least, it is necessary to discuss the role played by mythical hero who visits the counties or communities where he will rule at a later day. This discourse, enmeshed with a whole portion of mythical narratives, not only can be equaled to English Grand Tour, but also to tourism.

The Ethics and Aesthetics of Architecture: The Anglican Reception of Roman Baroque Churches

For Anglican travellers in Italy, Rome had an ambiguous status. It was the seat both of high culture and of ‘superstitious’ Roman Catholic practices, including art and architecture. These extremes culminated in church buildings. This article studies the perception and reaction of English travellers in Rome towards architecture of the Roman Catholic Church and its influence on English church architecture. It will reveal the church building as an aesthetic object, in addition to possessing religious qualities, through the analysis of printed travelogues and engravings that circulated amongst the English Grand Tour travellers. By analyzing the travelogue discourse — with particular attention to descriptions of specific church buildings and any intentional omissions in these descriptions — and examining the relationship between these discourses and contemporary English aesthetic theories, I will demonstrate how a certain appreciation for Roman Baroque church architecture was made acceptable and could even inspire the design of English church architecture. As will become clear, the process of travel included the separation of moral and artistic values in aesthetic appreciation. This separation made the cultural transfer between Italy and England possible in the 17th and early 18th centuries.

“A Joyous Star-Spangled-Bannerism”: Emma Juch, Opera in English Translation, and the American Cultural Landscape in the Gilded Age

AbstractSoprano Emma Juch (1860–1939), famous in the 1880s and 1890s, combined singing in concerts and festivals with a short English-language operatic career. Because Juch exemplifies a typical prima donna of the late nineteenth century, her life provides a perspective on the American cultural landscape that a focus on star performers cannot capture. Like all female singers, she had to negotiate between competing stereotypes about divas and the nineteenth-century distrust of women who led public lives. In response to these pressures, she constructed an image of a vigorous American singer who nevertheless understood her expected role in society. During the Gilded Age, opera's place in American culture was changing. Foreign-language opera became increasingly associated with wealth, the highest performance quality, and sometimes even cultural and moral uplift, whereas English-language opera suggested popular entertainment for the middle class and mediocre performance standards. The American Opera Company and Juch's own Emma Juch English Grand Opera Company attempted to fight against these assumptions and center opera in English performed by native singers as an important component of a distinctly American musical tradition. She was unsuccessful, however, and Juch's career, which began with great promise, lost momentum after her opera troupe folded and she slid into obscurity.

Relations Between the Grand Lodges of England and Sweden During the Long Eighteenth Century

This article is a study of two key moments in the relationship between the Grand Lodges in England and Sweden during the long eighteenth century. Both episodes illustrate how freemasonry reflected wider power and political relations between the two countries. Following the Treaty of Paris in 1763, Sweden became an important diplomatic forum for Britain, particularly in order to cultivate Russia. Sir John Goodricke’s mission to Sweden was accompanied by a vigorous attempt to establish freemasonry under the English Grand Lodge there and to drive out French freemasonry. These attempts collapsed, but many Swedes visiting England joined masonic lodges there. It is argued that concerns among elite Swedish masons at the way in which English lodges were recruiting lower class Swedes was an important factor in Swedish interest in the Union of the English Grand Lodges in 1813.

Australasian Reflections on Modern Slavery

In early February 2012, a federal judge threw out a law suit brought by PETA claiming that whales were ‘enslaved’ by SeaWorld (Note 1). While it met a swift and sorry end, the law suit provides an opportunity for reflection upon what constitutes slavery in the modern context. We are familiar with the Roman “Spartacus” slave scenario and the classic American Civil War “Gone with the Wind” slavery scenario – but how comfortably do we connote modern exploitative labour situations, where individuals (human not animal), find themselves with no avenue of escape. The most commonly challenged modern slavery situations are those in brothels: to what extent do modern brothels in Australia cohere with our understandings of slavery? In a recent High Court decision, Justice Michael Kirby took a strongly different view from his fellow judges in that regard. And what are we to make of the PETA lawsuit claiming (unsuccessfully) that orcas in SeaWorld are enslaved to humans to do their unwilling bidding as entertainers? As a logical extension of that claim, ought we not view the doomed horses in the English Grand National as slaves? They also do their unwilling bidding as cash cows, many of them dying in agony as part of the very spectacle. Very many situations that potentially cohere with slavery today will not cohere with our traditional understandings and stereotypes let alone our modern and as yet not fully articulated understandings. This is a debate more familiar in the USA – yet while Australia has not had an entrenched system of human slavery, an emerging jurisprudence points to modern incarnations while also reinforcing arguments about the effective enslavement of many Aboriginal people during the period of assimilation: a period that gave rise to the ‘Stolen Generation’. The purpose of this article is to reflect upon this emerging jurisprudence and to suggest that while we are continuing to unlock new ideas about slavery in the modern context – both human and animal – but we are far from developing, historically, strategies for their abolition. The way forward, it is suggested, is to recognize as a first step in the human context, that exploitative modern labour situations may appear akin to slavery but need perhaps more appropriately to be dealt with as modern servitude; and as a second step that jurisprudential understandings of animal enslavement: exemplified by the orcas but also personified in events like the Grand National; may appear on the comparative legal agenda in future decades.

Researching Freemasonry

This article deals with the development of historical enquiry into freemasonry since its origins to the current academic treatment. This development is divided into two general phases when freemasons researched their history themselves and when it during the Twentieth century became an academic subject. The major developmental lines in historiography are treated. It is argued that new archival findings will modify deeply rooted perceptions of historical events, exemplified by Anderson's account of the formation of the English grand lodge in 1717 and von Hunds initiation in Paris in 1742. Conclusively the article suggests a catalogue of research that still is to be done.

Calvinist Pilgrimages and Popish Encounters: Religious Identity and Sacred Space on the Dutch Grand Tour (1598-1685)

How did Calvinist travellers behave when they ventured into the lion’s den of Catholicism? Were Protestants on Grand Tour bound to ignore Popish sanctuaries, and – so it seemed – false relics, excessive processions, obscure rituals, and foolish idolatry or superstition? Did they mock or slander French or Italian Catholicism? According to textbook wisdom, these cross-confessional encounters on Grand Tour were seldom warm-hearted. Drawing on well-known travelogues from English Grand Tour travellers these religious contacts are mainly cast in black-and-white. Anglican noblemen and officials were envisaged as merciless critics of Italian Catholicism, seizing every opportunity to denounce the foulest popish defects. Using a body of unpublished travel books from the Netherlands, this paper tries to refine (or reconsider) this traditional conflict hypothesis. Despite profuse anti-popish propaganda in pamphlets, popular songs, and weekly sermons Dutch burghers seemed to behave rather ecumenically on their journey trough France, showing a lively interest, restrained respect or leniency towards Catholic ceremony, sacred objects and Popish sanctuaries. It will be argued that this broad-mindedness was triggered by practical considerations and a strong humanist imperative. Our aim, however, is to take the discussion somewhat further, as Dutch reformed travellers seemed to invent their own sort of pilgrimage in the early seventeenth century. La Rochelle, Charenton, Montauban, Geneva and other ‘hallowed’ places were soon integrated in the Dutch Grand Tour. Commemorating the Wars of Religion and Huguenot martyrdom, or personal religious deepening became part of the journey too.

The Pianoforte in the Classical Era

Introduction 1. The Early Piano I 2. The Early Piano II 3. Johannes Zumpe and the English Square Piano 4. After Zumpe: Small Pianos in Europe and America 1770-1795 5. Interlude: Buying a Pianoforte 6. Beyond Zumpe: The English Square Piano 1782-1805 7. Americus Backers, Inventor of the English Grand Piano 8. The English Grand, 1778-1805 9. Pianoforte or Pantalon? The Origins of German Tafelklaviere 10. Johann Andreas Stein and the German Grand Piano 11. Keyboard Instruments in Germany and Austria 1770-1790: An Overview 12. 'Mozart's Own Fortepiano' 13. In Vienna 14. Harpsichord, Pianoforte, and Combination Instruments 15. The Upright Pianoforte: the Genesis of Upright Forms 16. Into the Nineteenth Century 17. Construction of the Early Piano 18. At the Keyboard. Touch and Tone in the Early Piano 19. Fakes, Frauds, and Forgeries 20. Envoi Appendices I: Selected Passages from Early Sources II: A Proposal for the Systematic Classification of Piano Actions III: Americus Backers: the Inventory of his House and Workshop in 1778 Glossary Bibliography Index

Changes in English Grand Piano Actions between 1787 and 1792

Changes in English Grand Piano Actions between 1787 and 1792

J. C. Bach and the Early Piano in London

A study of Johann Christian Bach's keyboard music prompts the obvious and important question: which of his sonatas and concertos were composed for harpsichord, and which for the piano? (Indeed, did he think of them as two distinct instruments at all?) And what sort of pianos did he have available on the occasions when he played them in public? Did he really play his ‘Solo on the Piano Forte’ at the Thatched House on 2 June 1768 (in a concert that consisted mainly of orchestral music) on a little Zumpe square, or was he already using a prototype English grand? When were these various models of piano first made in London, and what musical use did other composers and performers, as well as J. C. Bach, make of them?

English Grand Strategy and the Blenheim Campaign of 1704

(1983). English Grand Strategy and the Blenheim Campaign of 1704. The International History Review: Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 3-19.

Notes on the Abolition of the English Grand Jury

Notes on the Abolition of the English Grand Jury