Nineteenth-century Studies Research Articles

Books Received in Nineteenth-Century Studies

Books Received in Nineteenth-Century Studies

Romantic Movements

This Reflections essay considers antiracist theory and practice and its impact on Romantic Studies today as displayed in a master’s-level module aimed at introducing the use of theory to postgraduate students of nineteenth-century studies. Alongside these concerns, the reflection considers what it means to feel “Romantic” today, as well as the role and usefulness of discomfort in postgraduate pedagogy.

La famiglia svizzera and Operatic Genre in Dresden and Milan

Abstract: A year after Joseph Weigl's sentimental Viennese Singspiel, Die Schweizerfamilie , premiered in 1809, it appeared in translation as La famiglia svizzera at the summer palace of the King of Saxony, Frederick Augustus. It soon became a mainstay of Dresden's Italian opera company. When a version of this adaptation appeared at Milan's La Scala in 1816, however, it was a catastrophic failure. The stark contrast between the two productions emphasizes the different ideals of the opera's creators, adapters, and audiences. The linked processes of transmission, adaptation, performance, and reception are a growing topic in opera scholarship, although studies of the early nineteenth century have generally considered cultural translations into German, rather than the other way around. La famiglia svizzera provides a valuable addition to our understanding of how operatic genre and its implications were conceived. In this essay, I trace how Dresden's adapters Italianized this opera and explain its divergent reception. The adapters—most likely Adolph Wagner and Franz Anton Schubert—barely changed Weigl's music but dramatically altered the tone, imagery, and characterization of the opera through a thoughtful Italian translation and newly composed recitatives. A reviewer nevertheless praised the opera's artistic unity and hoped for more such translations, "since German art agrees with German feelings." Milanese critics, however, specifically identified aspects of the adaptation that contributed to the opera's failure. These reviews fit within contemporary debates in the musical press about national operatic genre. I argue that La famiglia svizzera offers a microcosm of these debates, which mirrored both its creators' and its viewers' preconceptions.

Afterword

The afterword draws out the political stakes of the recent expansion of critical infrastructure studies. Describing the articles’ interventions, it explains how nineteenth-century studies is well positioned to engage infrastructure to perform vital progressive scholarship. 

Bengali bhadralok and the Bengali press: a study of the early nineteenth century

ABSTRACT Bengal occupies a special position in the history of Indian journalism as the journey of the first English newspaper and, after that, the first vernacular newspaper, started from here. The country had the tradition of writing newsletters, but newspapers were a European import. Unlike other means of communication, newspapers were free from direct government control and they flourished mostly as private endeavours. This apparent independence was often undermined by the indirect influence exerted by the state which was run by a mercantile company in the first half of the nineteenth century. The present paper probes to seek the reasons behind the late arrival of newspapers in Bengal/India, then their negotiations with the state power and finally their reincarnation in the hands of the socio-religious reformers of the Bengali bhadralok section. The Bengali press burgeoned under the patronage of this group, which can be closely linked with the bhadralok’s intent of appropriating and communicating knowledge. To fulfil this aim, they also established different Sabhas or associations and brought out newspapers as the mouthpiece of those organisations. These Sabhas and the newspapers associated with them worked together in establishing the locations of knowledge production and its dissemination; thus, influencing public debates in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Delacroix et la nature éd. par Claire Bessède

Reviewed by: Delacroix et la nature éd. par Claire Bessède Karen Quandt BessÈde, Claire, éd. Delacroix et la nature. Musée du Louvre and Le Passage, 2022. ISBN 978-2-84742-482-9. Pp. 160. A product of the pandemic, it is fitting and even poignant that this exhibition extended a breath of fresh air to Delacroix's storied artworks. Country and urban gardens, studies and inventories of trees and flowers, and an array of animal sketches seem like a welcome refuge from the painter's dark and intimidating grand format scenes of massacres, animal combats, and brooding interiors. Yet, the point of Delacroix et la nature is not to position the painter as a nature artist. Instead, all of the letters, journal entries, sketches, curiosities, and paintings recently displayed at the Musée Eugène Delacroix in Paris worked together to embrace the dissonance exemplified by a leading studio artist who was nevertheless sensitive to nature's beauties and processes. The catalog opens with a brief preface by Laurence des Cars, a specialist of nineteenth-century art recently appointed Director of the Musée du Louvre, who applauds the curators' selection of local works that minimized the need for long distance transport. It continues in a "green" vein with three essays that examine how Delacroix "reinvented" nature into his own creations; how his animal paintings differed from conventional hunting scenes of the time period; and how gardens and botany developed his sensitivity to the natural world. The ensuing presentation of the exhibition's works, which are often accompanied by ample notes, helps synthesize an otherwise seemingly eclectic array as it underscores Delacroix's strong sensibilities for nature, his keen eye for flora and fauna, and the processes by which he refashioned his experiences of nature into studio paintings. Smartly interspersed amongst the impressive collection of Delacroix's oil paintings and drawings were several animal sculptures created by Antoine Louis Barye, a friend who often accompanied the painter to the Jardin des Plantes to study its animals and to attend animal dissections. The exhibition culminated in Delacroix's studio (the museum is located on the site of his last residence in Paris, which had the rather unusual distinction of having a garden), where signature colorful oil paintings à la Rubens were juxtaposed with taxidermized animals from the nearby Maison Deyrolle as well as with landscape watercolors by the young Delacroix's friends Theodore and Newton Fielding. Delacroix et la nature might not have the scope of a major retrospective or "blockbuster" exhibition, but it is nonetheless powerful in how it offers an incisive and unique look at an interesting cross-section of Delacroix's works. The catalog is an essential supplement to the exhibition, since it expounds on certain artworks and offers helpful historical and biographical details. Above all, the catalog lends a sense of cohesion to what exhibition viewers might have perceived to be loosely organized themes. Specialists of Delacroix and of nineteenth-century studies are sure to benefit the most from the scholarly expertise that buttresses the catalog, but the exhibition itself was surely a delight for all visitors who could experience the richness of Delacroix's dramatic compositions through his intimate examinations of the natural world. [End Page 204] Karen Quandt Wabash College (IN) Copyright © 2023 American Association of Teachers of French

Grammar

Although grammar is often associated with schematic approaches to education, it was a hotly contested subject in the nineteenth century. Considering nineteenth-century grammar texts, as well as the recent turn to “grammar” as a theoretical lens in nineteenth-century studies, this keywords entry proposes that grammar, far from reflecting fixed and incontrovertible precepts, serves as a powerful tool for querying and renegotiating disciplinary structures.

Rape

The Victorian period was notorious for its oblique representations of sexual violence. This article argues that rape is a necessary word and concept for Victorian studies and, we contend, a keyword for a growing subfield of literary and cultural scholarship, humanistic rape studies. Without rape as a stable signifier of specific acts, we find ourselves transported back to the nineteenth century, fumbling like Tess Durbeyfield for language that adequately describes what happened. Rape remains an indispensable domain of nineteenth-century literary studies precisely because it is a thoroughly historically contingent phenomenon. It is part of the power of rape, of its current structural pervasiveness, that it is capable of shaping people's expectations to such an extent that it suggests itself as a timeless, eternally recurring fact of life, when it actually amounts to an intensely situated set of behaviors, many of which crystallized into their current forms in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, propelled by changing labor conditions, European imperialism, and shifting family and romantic configurations. Literary scholarship, especially in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century studies, has traditionally attempted to tether representations of gender-based violence to “objective,” transhistorical frameworks such as “the law” and psychology, a move we wish to counter here.

“What I Did at Vassar Stayed with Me”: Victorian Studies and Activism, a Case Study

Vassar College was one of the few North American undergraduate institutions to offer a concentration in Victorian studies. From 1970 until 2021, when the program transformed into Global Nineteenth-Century Studies, nearly ninety majors and minors passed through the program. Drawing on surveys and interviews with the program's graduates, the essay contends that Vassar's Victorian studies program engendered certain mental habits as well as specific approaches to activism, which the essay broadly defines to include activist scholarship and journalism, working for change within institutions, and reimagining family life and child-rearing. The Vassar alums who participated in the surveys and interviews made direct links between their activist commitments and an undergraduate education that emphasized primary-source research as well as multidisciplinarity.

Looking for William

Literary tourism has recently emerged as a lively field of research, especially in nineteenth-century studies. As a cultural phenomenon it has proved to be particularly popular in the British Isles, where its origins can be traced back to the eighteenth century. This essay analyses literary tourism in relation to one of England’s most renowned authors: Shakespeare. Garrick’s 1769 Jubilee is explored to explain how this well-orchestrated commemorative event paved the way for the earliest pilgrimages to Stratford-upon-Avon. Secondly, the Shakespeare family homes, especially the Birthplace, are analysed as historical national icons that have elicited ideas of Englishness. Finally, there is a discussion on authenticity in relation to the Birthplace and The Globe. Using theoretical terminology coined by Lacan and Baudrillard, the essay seeks to demonstrate the inability to fully experience authenticity, as it is impossible to access a reality—Shakespeare’s past—that has ceased to exist.

Looking for William

Literary tourism has recently emerged as a lively field of research, especially in nineteenth-century studies. As a cultural phenomenon it has proved to be particularly popular in the British Isles, where its origins can be traced back to the eighteenth century. This essay analyses literary tourism in relation to one of England’s most renowned authors: Shakespeare. Garrick’s 1769 Jubilee is explored to explain how this well-orchestrated commemorative event paved the way for the earliest pilgrimages to Stratford-upon-Avon. Secondly, the Shakespeare family homes, especially the Birthplace, are analysed as historical national icons that have elicited ideas of Englishness. Finally, there is a discussion on authenticity in relation to the Birthplace and The Globe. Using theoretical terminology coined by Lacan and Baudrillard, the essay seeks to demonstrate the inability to fully experience authenticity, as it is impossible to access a reality—Shakespeare’s past—that has ceased to exist.

Melissa Free. Beyond Gold and Diamonds: Genre, the Authorial Informant, and the British South African Novel. Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2021. Pp. 288. $95.00 (cloth).

Melissa Free. Beyond Gold and Diamonds: Genre, the Authorial Informant, and the British South African Novel. Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2021. Pp. 288. $95.00 (cloth). - Volume 61 Issue 4

Pasts at Play: Childhood Encounters with History in British Culture, 1750-1914, edited by Rachel Bryant Davies and Barbara Gribling

Reviewed by: Pasts at Play: Childhood Encounters with History in British Culture ed. by Rachel Bryant Davies and Barbara Gribling Siân Pooley (bio) Pasts at Play: Childhood Encounters with History in British Culture, 1750-1914, edited by Rachel Bryant Davies and Barbara Gribling; pp. xiv + 272. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020, £85.00, $130.00. Pasts at Play: Childhood Encounters with History in British Culture, 1750-1914 shows the benefits of a "collaborative, multidisciplinary approach" to the long nineteenth century (14). Rachel Bryant Davies and Barbara Gribling have created a lucid and engaging volume that brings together expertise in history, classics, history and philosophy of science, and English literature. The edited volume reveals the "variety of historical, mythical or imagined pasts" with which children interacted, and the nine chapters guide the reader across disciplinary divides (7). The authors' complementary expertise thus enables connections and comparisons that a single-author monograph seldom facilitates. The book's chronological structure mirrors historical narratives that children encountered. The reader moves across the centuries beginning with children's engagement with biblical and archaeological pasts before examining classical encounters, representations of medieval and early modern England, and finally narratives that included recent events in British history. This structure expands on what Melanie Keene describes as the "multilayered series of pasts" with which children interacted (43). Each chapter offers important insights into how, as Virginia Zimmerman describes in relation to ancient Egypt, "the past was both framed by, and understood in relation to, the present" (53). The editors identify "consumerism, knowledge and interaction" as central themes (10). Many chapters address these themes obliquely, so that the nonexpert reader would sometimes have benefited from being told more explicitly how the findings presented here speak to wider debates in nineteenth-century studies. Four arguments are central to several case studies and suggest important avenues for future research. First, Pasts at Play emphasizes the "multiplicity of ways children encountered the past" (11). Rather than focusing on a single medium, the volume juxtaposes magazines, novels, guidebooks, exhibitions, toys, games, and pageants. This gives a powerful impression of the ubiquity of the past within products designed for children. The authors provide detailed context for the sources, many of which have relatively seldom been the subject of scholarly interest. This attention to little-used sources such as puzzles, games, and travel literature is invaluable for other scholars of childhood. Middle-class adults intended most of the histories for literate children, but several chapters reveal that these pasts could also reach working-class and [End Page 497] younger children. Given that the past was so pervasive within childhood activities, Pasts at Play shows how an understanding of the heroes and stories with which people grew up helps us to make sense of their values and identities. Future scholarship could helpfully build on these foundations by establishing whether this intense engagement with history was a distinctive feature of childhoods during the long nineteenth century. The volume's periodization reveals significant continuities across these decades. The volume thus extends J. H. Plumb's interpretation of "The New World of Children in Eighteenth-Century England" in which middling and elite parents newly spent "larger and larger sums of money, not only for their education, but also for their entertainment and amusement" (Past and Present, no. 67 [1977], 90). The book's thirty-one well-chosen illustrations bring to life the visual richness of the child-centered consumer culture across the period of 1750 to 1914. By analyzing changing interpretations, many of the authors reveal the value of tracing revisions and variations across editions and between genres. Rosemary Mitchell's study of biographies of Stuart women reveals "sustained continuity" in the presentation of female lives (152). Irrespective of readership, didactic works for girls continued to celebrate role models defined by their companionate marriages, domesticity, and Anglican piety into the early twentieth century. Scriptural pasts also coexisted with the newest scientific ideas, so that Noah's Ark could convey geological, zoological, and biblical messages simultaneously across these decades. The editors point out that "tracking what was expected to be known—requisite knowledge—and what explanations, clues and prompts needed to be provided, allows us to interrogate the sorts...

The genotype-phenotype distinction: from Mendelian genetics to 21st century biology.

The Genotype-Phenotype (G-P) distinction was proposed in the context of Mendelian genetics, in the wake of late nineteenth century studies about heredity. In this paper, we provide a conceptual analysis that highlights that the G-P distinction was grounded on three pillars: observability, transmissibility, and causality. Originally, the genotype is the non-observable and transmissible cause ofits observable and non-transmissible effect, the phenotype. We argue that the current developments of biology have called the validity of such pillars into question. First, molecular biology has unveiled the putative material substrate of the genotype (qua DNA), making it an observable object. Second, numerous findings on non-genetic heredity suggest that some phenotypic traits can be directly transmitted. Third, recent organicist approaches to biological phenomena have emphasized the reciprocal causality between parts of a biological system, which notably applies to the relation between genotypes and phenotypes. As a consequence, we submit that the G-P distinction has lost its general validity, although it can still apply to specific situations. This calls for forging new frameworks and concepts to better describe heredity and development.

Seeing Whiteness in the Nineteenth Century and Beyond

This essay argues for the importance of teaching the history of the idea of whiteness in nineteenth-century studies. It picks up questions from other fields of study and popular discourse—"Why does whiteness escape observation and examination? How might we learn to see its presence and power?"—and places them in the Victorian classroom. Strategies and texts for helping students think about whiteness as part of both critical race and nineteenth-century studies include approaching canonical texts from new perspectives, incorporating non-literary forms of media for analysis, and introducing students to critics like Toni Morrison and Richard Dyer.

New Diplomatic History and the Study of the Global Nineteenth Century

The cultural turn in diplomatic history and the rise of the field of new diplomatic history since the end of the twentieth century has not, to date, had a great impact on the study of the global nineteenth century. This article argues that bringing the methods and perspectives of new diplomatic history to bear on the study of the global nineteenth century is fruitful in at least five respects. First, it encourages multivocality by including informal diplomatic actors in the study of cross-cultural diplomacy and colonial encounters; second, it calls upon the historian to pay equal attention to the motives, perspectives, and worldviews of Europeans and non-Europeans; third, it pays attention to the conditions and circumstances, including violence, coercion, translation, place, ceremony, and gifts, of cross-cultural diplomacy and imperial expansion; fourth, it highlights the long-term character of imperial and diplomatic relations; and fifth, it broadens the range of available sources to include a wide range of textual and non-textual sources. In all of these respects, new diplomatic history can help historians of the global nineteenth century to overcome the traps of Eurocentrism and teleological and macrohistorical biases.

Transmediality: A Model in Global Nineteenth-Century Studies

I argue that the nineteenth century is particularly pertinent to our understanding of transmediality and, moreover, that transmediality offers a valuable framework to rethink and study the period itself. In what follows, then, I sketch some of the advantages of what I call nineteenth-century transmedia studies, and of global transmedia studies in particular. I begin by outlining how a focus on transmediality transforms our understanding of the era. Against this backdrop, I show the value of transmedia practices for global nineteenth-century studies, and, last but not least, spotlight some of the implications this may have for the shape of future nineteenth-century scholarship and funding.

Leaving Victorian Studies Behind: The Case of Vassar College

Much of the recent reflection on nineteenth-century global studies has focused on research, graduate program(me)s, or upper-level courses. This essay recounts the transformation of the Program in Victorian Studies at Vassar College, one of the few institutions in North America offering an undergraduate degree in Victorian Studies, into a global nineteenth-century studies program. The new multidisciplinary program prioritizes teaching at the 100-level in order to prepare students to take a global perspective into advanced courses. Its introductory team-taught course, ‘Revolution, Evolution, and the Global Nineteenth Century’, is the place where the Vassar faculty work out both the practical and theoretical challenges of teaching ‘the global’, such as how to incorporate non-Anglophone materials as well as science and technology into a global curriculum. The course - and the program more broadly - constitute a serious effort to decolonize the study of the nineteenth century at the undergraduate level.

Domestic Settler Writing and the Global Nineteenth Century

Domestic settler writing has long remained a largely overlooked by-product of imperial expansion and the resultant exportation of popular culture. Global nineteenth-century studies may offer an opportunity to reconsider this admittedly amorphous set of writing from a newly unifying perspective. Approaching these texts through different lenses does more than bring them to renewed scholarly attention and tease out hitherto unacknowledged aspects. In turn, they can enrich global nineteenth-century studies itself, ensuring that the experience of female settlers, emigrating families, and unaccompanied children are not once again marginalized. This article resituates domestic settler writing within a transoceanic, global field of representations, setting out three specific directions for the critical investigation to proceed: (1) a distant reading to capture patterns, (2) a mapping of the circulation of such colonial reading matter, and (3) a comparative analysis, especially of texts that engage with such exchanges, through intertextual references or rewritings.

Victorian Studies, Literature, and the Global Nineteenth Century

This essay advocates critical examination of the function of the ‘global’ in global nineteenth-century studies. Using the Victorian novel as a case study, this essay conceives global nineteenth-century studies as a site for disciplinary boundary crossing, in which scholars across fields can dialogue to expand their historical, geographical, and methodological scope, while still respecting field-specific expertise and localized historical knowledge.