Second Half Of Eighteenth Century Research Articles

O Concílio dos Deuses de Cyrillo Volkmar Machado – Análise da Pintura Decorativa no tecto do Salão de Baile do Palácio Barão de Quintela e Conde de Farrobo (Lisboa)

O presente trabalho centra-se na análise da pintura mural O Concílio dos Deuses, que o artista Cyrillo Volkmar Machado realizou para o tecto do salão de baile da antiga residência do Barão de Quintela. Esta é talvez a sua obra mais emblemática, pois é provavelmente a primeira vez que um artista, no âmbito da arte da pintura mural portuguesa, se reporta à utilização de uma fonte literária lusitana para o décor de um espaço coeso com os novos conceitos de sociabilidade emergente na segunda metade do século XVIII.

Anthropomorphism and Zoomorphism in the Ornamental Art of the Crimean Tatars

The author of the article reveals the problem of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic images in Islamic art, particularly in the Turkic ornamentation of the Crimea. Superficial, unscientific interpretations of motifs and ornamental compositions often lead to the search for and appropriation of anthropomorphism without appropriate research, loose interpretations of motifs, and the creation of a new mythology. Despite conservative views regarding the categorical denial of the permissiveness of the image of a person, there are many surviving works of fine and decorative art that confirm an opposite tradition. Currently, there are practically no studies of anthropomorphism and zoomorphism in the Turkic ornamentation of the Crimea, their typological and artistic features, and their symbolic context. Based on the material of decorative and applied art of the Crimean Tatars from the fourteenth century to the present, examples of zoomorphic and anthropomorphic ornamental images are provided in the article. They are stylized objects – fully, partially, or in the form of a silhouette – reflecting the surrounding real world of living beings. Complete naturalistic images (birds, fish, animals, insects) are found on objects until the first half of fifteenth century, and then starting again from the second half of eighteenth century. From the sixteenth to the first half of eighteenth centuries, anthropomorphic and zoomorphic motifs were depicted in a stylized form. The author of the study reveals the symbolism of the most common motifs, along with the typological and artistic features of the images. As a result of the study, it was revealed that the color, silhouette, and figurativeness of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic images in the Crimean Tatar decorative and applied art depend primarily on the material, technique, and functional purpose of the created object. In addition to images on objects, anthropomorphism is present as the silhouette of objects.

Complementary mapping techniques to characterize the wood finish of musical instruments

The wood finish of historical bowed string musical instruments made in Cremona (Italy) during the seventeenth and eighteenth century is a complex multi-layered coating system, where varnishes and other organic binders are variously mixed with inorganic fillers and pigments. It consists of several layers with reduced thickness (tens of microns or less), hard to be distinguished due to the similarity of the constituent materials. Nevertheless, the identification of chemical and morphological features (layering and boundaries) is strictly necessary to disclose the traditional manufacturing procedures. In this paper, we propose an innovative protocol to fully characterize such a multi-layered coating system by combining hyperspectral photoluminescence (PL) micro-imaging with μFTIR-ATR mapping and SEM-EDX analysis. The protocol has been employed to study three cross-sectional samples from violins made by Lorenzo Storioni (second half of eighteenth century), whereas a properly reproduced laboratory mock-up was used to set the analytical protocol. The obtained results demonstrate that the combination of these complementary spectroscopy mapping techniques in a high-resolution strategy allows one to clearly identify the morphology of a few microns thin layers, to assess the penetration depth of sizing treatments into the wood and to detect restoration areas.

Cameralism, Josephinism, and Enlightenment: The Dynamic of Reform in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1740–92

In his great 1848 historical drama,Ein Bruderzwist im Hause Habsburg, the Austrian playwright Franz Grillparzer has Emperor Matthias utter the words that have often been applied to understanding the whole history of the Habsburg monarchy:Das ist der Fluch von unserm edeln Haus:Auf halben Wegen und zu halber TatMit halben Mitteln zauderhaft zu streben.[That is the curse of our noble house:Striving hesitatingly on half waysto half action with half means.]True as those sentiments may be of many periods in the history of the monarchy, the one period of which it cannotbe said is the second half of eighteenth century. The age of Maria Theresa, Joseph II, and Leopold II was perhaps the greatest era of consistent and committed reform in the four-hundred-year history of the monarchy. What I want to address in this article are some aspects of the dynamic of this reform era, and this falls into two categories. On the one hand, there is the broad energizing or motive force behind the larger development, and on the other, there are the ideas or assumptions that lay behind the policies adopted. As might be evident from the subtitle of my article, I propose to look primarily at the second of these categories. I do so because I think while Habsburg historiography has reached considerable consensus on the first, it has not looked enough on the second as an explanatory hermeneutic.

Fashioning the Deviant Male Body in Tomás de Iriarte’s El señorito mimado o la mala educación

TOMAS de Marte (1750-1791), most often celebrated for his imaginative and innovative treatment of fable in his Fabulas literarias (1782), was also a cosmopolitan playwright, satirist and translator who was a constituent member of Madrid's artistic and literary scene during second half of eighteenth century along with his contemporaries Jose Cadalso, Leandro Fernandez de Moratin, Ramon de la Cruz, and Francisco de Goya. (1) His original comedies--such as El senorito mimado o la mala educacion (1787) and La senorita malcriada (1788)--were immediately recognized and well received for their finely tuned and versified representations of Spanish society, as well as for their incorporation of neoclassical aesthetics and theatrical reforms. (2) In El senorito mimado, which enjoyed a particularly thunderous reception (Cox 240) upon its first staging in 1788, Iriarte lampoons improper and insubstantial education of Madrid's idle youth exemplified by foppish Don Mariano. (3) In most recent analyses of comedy, critics have focused on topics ranging from its aesthetic, historical, and political context (Andioc, Sebold), Iriarte's literary influences (Cox), as well as its treatment of themes of letter writing (Fueger) and marriage (McCallahan). However, role of bodily comportment and dress in fashioning of Mariano's deviant masculine character has yet to be explored, despite visibility Iriarte gives to these subjects in his comedy. (4) In this article, I will highlight a new context in which to read Iriarte's El senorito mimado o la mala educacion. In comedy, Mariano's characteristic indeterminacy and transgressive attitudes vis-a-vis hegemonic figures of patriarchal authority--embodied by his virtuous uncle Don Cristobal--are sartorially coded, and problematize facile categorization and diagnosis of his deviant attributes and behavior. Throughout El senorito mimado, Mariano operates as an agent of class transvestism by donning modish signifiers of both petimetre--an upper-class fop--and majo--a working-class representative of Spanish tradition or casticismo, blending and confusing both types and their respective paradigms of dress. This confusion of otherwise distinctive male garments highlights permeability of terms and types to which they refer, along with porous nature of social boundaries at turn of century. Indeed, concomitant visual markers associated with petimetre (morning suits, canes, watches) and majo (capes, broad hats), along with types themselves, were in constant flux throughout eighteenth century in Spain. In providing a new lens through which to analyze Iriarte's comedy, I argue that frequent references to items of male fashion index eighteenth-century anxieties concerning appropriate masculine behavior and bodily comportment, along with growing instability of recognizable social hierarchies and modes of representation and signification. It should be emphasized that such anxieties were rendered possible by the unstable, precarious position of masculinity in societies that long held masculine to be a natural, stable marker of superiority over feminine (Penrose, Masculinity 9). Sartorial signifiers in El senorito mimado--especially those indicated by stage directions--and contemporaneous literary texts and discourses will confirm and give contour to these underlying tensions concerning potential threat of subversive masculinities that disrupt models of gentlemanly, virtuous masculinity (hombria de bien) promoted by eighteenth-century moralists like Iriarte. In other words, deviant masculinity --one that distorts and evades ideal forms embodied by hombre de bien--manifests itself in Iriarte's play as a class transvestism in which protagonist oscillates and shifts between sartorial markers of sexually deviant petimetre and socially marginalized, working-class majo. The comedy's title refers to Mariano's--el senorito's--inchoate masculinity: he is neither a child nor an adult. …

Polki w Wenecji w drugiej połowie XVIII wieku. Zapiski z podróży Teofili z Radziwiłłów Morawskiej i Katarzyny z Sosnowskich Platerowej

POLISH WOMEN IN VENICE IN THE SECOND HALF OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. TRAVEL DIARIES OF TEOFILA KONSTANCJA MORAWSKA NÉE RADZIWIŁŁ AND KATARZYNA PLATEROWA NÉE SOSNOWSKA Venice, one of the most enchanting cities in the world, has always been a very popular destination for travellers. For Poles who travelled through Europe in the eighteenth century, Venice was an important and frequently visited city. Polish noblewomen of that era, who travelled as frequently as their male counterparts, wrote many memoirs describing their journeys. Very few of their diaries, however, have survived to this day. Memoirs describing their Venetian escapades, rarely published, are mostly buried deep in archives and libraries. Travel diaries of Teofila Konstancja Morawska, née Radziwiłł (1738-1818) and Katarzyna Platerowa, née Sosnowska (born c. 17481832), widely considered as two of the most interesting publications describing Venice of that time, are filled with thoughtful observations of life in eighteenth-century Venice. Details about the city’s landscape and architectural artefacts, the chronicles of theatrical performances, descriptions of works of art and local cuisine and customs represent a remarkable source of information about appearances, the mentality and everything that defined the life of the eighteenth-century Venetians. Their memoirs are on a par with those written by men of their time and their observant eyes make them an extraordinary source of information about life in Venice of the eighteenth century.

After Jonathan Edwards: The Courses of the New England Theology. Edited by Oliver D. Crisp and Douglas A. Sweeney. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. xviii + 348 pp. $99.00 cloth; $35.00 paper.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)After Jonathan Edwards: The Courses of England . Edited by Oliver D. Crisp and Douglas A. Sweeney . York : Oxford University Press , 2012. xviii + 348 pp. $99.00 cloth; $35.00 paper.Book Reviews and NotesThis collection of seventeen essays is presented as a corrective to a position first articulated almost a ago by Joseph Haroutunian in Piety Versus Moralism: The Passing of England (New York: Henry Holt, 1932), a classic text that contributed in large part to twentieth-century resurgence of interest in academic study of Jonathan Edwards. Taking my copy of this text from shelf, where it had most likely rested unopened since graduate school, I was surprised to discover on flyleaf strong signature of influential Presbyterian theologian himself. I also easily located in its introduction a strong statement of view essays in After Jonathan Edwards aim to counter: seen from perspective of theology of Edwards, writes Haroutunian, the history of England is history of a degradation (xxii).Coined in nineteenth century, term New England Theology refers to a theological tradition whose diverse members promoted a style of evangelical Calvinism that, although doctrinally distinctive, claimed allegiance to thought of Jonathan Edwards. Following Haroutunian, growth of this theological tradition has commonly been framed not as development, but as decline. As collection's editors, Oliver D. Crisp and Douglas A. Sweeney, observe, the England theology is a tale of ever more arid and abstruse metaphysical theorizing on basis of an original, and intellectually dynamic, Edwardsian deposit (5). Contrary to this declension narrative, they assert this tradition is the most significant and enduring Christian theological school of thought to have originated in United States (4). The essays in this volume support this contention by considering not only development and importance of England in nineteenth-century America but also international reach of its theological vision.The collection is divided into three sections. The first places intellectual and theological concerns of Edwards's immediate successors, called Divinity, in a larger context. The essays written by Mark Valeri and James P. Byrd draw interesting connections between this theological school and issues of broader historical concern. Valeri shifts attention from doctrine to method by arguing that a distinguishing feature of Edwardsian thought was its promotion of the culture of gentility that defined rules of Anglo-American social discourse during second half of eighteenth century (18). Byrd explores theological roots of Edwardsian anti-slavery activism, which at times placed Divinity in conflict with genteel England society. Crisp's essay, by contrast, stands out for directly challenging a central element of declension thesis, development of a governmental doctrine of atonement, which Haroutunian considered symptomatic of degraded moralism of England theology. To undermine this claim Crisp argues that the seeds of England governmental view of atonement were sown by Edwards himself, and that precedents exist for this view in earlier Reform thought (78).The essays in volume's second section are each devoted to prominent representatives of England Theology, from Samuel Hopkins to Edwards Amasa Park. …

Los componentes socio-étnicos y sus espacios en las Huastecas a través de los censos parroquiales, 1770-1780

Este articulo analiza los parametros poblacionales en las Huastecas durante el ultimo tercio del siglo XVIII, tomando como fuente principal los padrones eclesiasticos. El analisis muestra que si bien desde una perspectiva general puede resultar valido el supuesto historiografico que considera dicho espacio social como multietnico y multicultural, es de destacar la existencia de muchas localidades con poblacion unietnica, asi como de una gran cantidad de mulatos, que se revelan, numericamente hablando, como el segundo grupo en el area.

Vico and the Transformation of Rhetoric in Early Modern Europe, by David L. Marshall.

Vico and Transformation of Rhetoric in Early Modern Europe, by David L. Marshall. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010. viii, 302 pp. $85.00 US (cloth). Published in 2010, David L. Marshall's book is already widely known by Vico scholars across world, and, references to it on internet are anything to go by, its reputation is growing. This recognition is well deserved. Marshall interprets whole oeuvre of Giambattista Vico (1668-1744), professor of at University of Naples, with great erudition and invention. Brian Vickers's and, especially, Nancy S. Struever's achievements seem to be his main intellectual resources, with their recognition of significance of in modern age. Though Vico delivered lectures on art of persuasion as university professor from 1699 onwards, subject of somehow all but disappeared from his works after 1710. This book attempts to offer an explanation for this curious omission, claiming that if one wants to construct an overarching account of what Vico achieved as a thinker, then single best line of inquiry to follow is his sublimation of rhetoric (p. 4). Marshall thus proposes a narrative of sublimation to show constitutive, yet invisible presence of in Vico's thought. By sublimation he means, roughly, a special intellectual process whereby Vico, as it were, deconstructs classical categories of rhetoric, transforms (or transfigures) them, then constructs a new discourse from them--a new science of applied to circumstances of modern age. Classical was bound up with, and grew out of, political experience of Athenian polis and Roman republic; most pressing question for Vico was how one can renew to allow it to operate within completely different political and historical context of early eighteenth-century Naples. Thus, ironically, the absence of oratorical institutions ... drives Vico toward a more sophisticated understanding of rhetoric (p. 196). In this narrative, Marshall ingeniously reinterprets--sometimes going against received scholarly opinion--the major Vichian topics including verum-factum principle, famous conceptions of true Homer or of poetic wisdom and differences between three editions of Scienza nuova, etc. The Conclusion chapter comprises an outline of reaction to Vico in Naples in second half of eighteenth century, concluding with a presentation of Vincenzo Cuoco's reflections on failure of 1799 revolution in Naples. As for Marshall, he, who advocated a kind a political education to foster communication between elite and many, was the first to intuit Vico's sublimation of rhetoric (p. 271). From this viewpoint, Vico's whole intellectual enterprise can be retrospectively seen as a transformation of classical into a cultural politics of communication. However, some terms which are crucial in Marshall's analysis, ingenium (wit), sensus communis, and sublime are also categories of modern theories of aesthetics, and as such may be quite familiar from historical narratives of modern aesthetics, yet it seems to me that Marshall rather neglects these. I would also raise one more point. This book draws many illuminating comparisons between Vico and his predecessors and contemporaries (the list is truly impressive), yet one name is surprisingly lacking: Lord Shaftesbury. Although he was contemporary of Vico, he also had a profound Humanist background and, as a point of interest, he was also a fellow-citizen of Vico's, since Shaftesbury moved to Naples in 1711 and died there in 1713. …

Italian Opera in the Age of the American Revolution (review)

Italian Opera in Age of American Revolution. By Pierpaolo Polzonetti. (Cambridge Studies in Opera.) Cambridge: Cambridge Uni - versity Press, 2011. [xix, 376 p. ISBN 9780521897082. $125.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, index. Italian opera was one of dramatic genres that most directly responded to epoch-changing social, political, and cultural events in American Colonies during second half of eighteenth century. News from overseas flooded into European gazettes and newspapers, arousing as much enthusiasm as harsh criticism. They carried along ideas of freedom, equality, and democracy, as well as new types of characters that found their way onto operatic stages: good-hearted Native, peaceful Quaker, emancipated woman. This had far-reaching effects on ways operas challenged established social structures and institutions, even when America was not directly evoked in subject of librettos. Given pervasive impact that American events had on European culture of time, it is surprising that music historians have paid such scant attention to ramifications for opera. Pierpaolo Polzonetti's monograph fills this lacuna and provides a welcome contribution to our understanding of genre. Through an impressive array of philosophical texts, pamphlets, newspaper articles, and memoirs, all tied to close readings of musical sources, his study analyzes burgeoning influence of American subjects in eighteenth-century Italian opera and relationship to development of several different strands of thought in Enlighten - ment culture. The book covers several geographical areas inside and outside of Italy, and it focuses on a period of forty years: from 1750, when Carlo Goldoni and Baldassarre Galuppi's Il mondo della luna received its premiere in Venice, to 1790, year Lorenzo Da Ponte turned Giuseppe Palomba and Pietro Guglielmi's La quakera spiritosa into a pasticcio for Vienna. The first of these, in fact, antedates earliest entry in Polzonetti's core repertory (p. 4), I napoletani in America (libretto by Francesco Cerlone, music by Niccolo Piccinni), by eighteen years. Il mondo della luna introduces profound impact of contemporary American events on Euro - pean culture at large. In Haydn's 1777 version of opera for relatively conservative court of Eszterhaza, Moon, a topsy-turvy counterpart of Earth, becomes a metaphor for America, serving court's attempt to align itself with enlightened reformism promoted in Vienna. The terminus post quem non of Polzonetti's work shows that European fascination with America as the land of hope and opportunity (p. 15) gradually came to an end when French Revolution violently shook political foundations of Europe. As censorship became stricter, characters like Vertunna, independent, gun-toting female protagonist of La quakera spiritosa, were looked upon with increasing discomfort, and subjects dealing with revolutionary topics were considered subversive. As Polzonetti argues (pp. 298-307), when Da Ponte made a pasticcio out of Palomba's libretto for Vienna, he toned down stereotypical features of main character and tempered gender role inversion that dominated original work. While Polzonetti's forty-year time-span coincides with golden age of opera buffa, his discussion of works on American subjects begins with an opera seria-Carl Heinrich Graun's Montezuma on a libretto by Frederick Great, King of Prussia (Berlin, 1755). Although Montezuma does not concern itself specifically with North America, it serves as an introduction to web of discourses that joined European interest in New World with growing cultural influence of Enlightenment. If opera seria provided a platform for ideological agenda of Frederick's enlightened absolutism in Prussia, opera buffa became principal vehicle for disseminating view of America as a place of political utopias in Italy. …

Rivalidade imperial e comércio fronteiriço: aspectos do contrabando entre as missões espanholas de Mojos e Chiquitos e a capitania portuguesa de Mato Grosso (c. 1767-1800)

A contenda entre Espanha e Portugal pela definição da posse das regiões limítrofes das colônias da América foi acompanhada de políticas distintas no tocante ao comércio entre vassalos de ambos os impérios. Na segunda metade do século XVIII, na região do vale do rio Guaporé (centro da América do Sul), ao passo que havia rigorosa proibição ao contrabando por parte da Coroa espanhola, a Coroa portuguesa estimulava veladamente o comércio ilegal, que se tornou intensamente praticado por mercadores, missionários, militares e mesmo governadores. As missões de Mojos e Chiquitos e as regiões de Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Cochabamba e La Plata, embora produtoras de gado, sebo, mulas, cacau, cera, algodão e açúcar, sofriam com a escassez de artigos europeus devido ao monopólio comercial espanhol, situação que encorajava missionários e comerciantes a procurar fornecedores alternativos. Por sua vez, os portugueses, estimulados pela Coroa, contavam com pedras e metais preciosos das minas de Mato Grosso para adquirir os artigos de primeira necessidade indispensáveis ao abastecimento do Forte Príncipe da Beira, circunstância que propiciava uma articulação com os interesses de setores locais dos domínios espanhóis. Neste texto analiso os impactos do contrabando sobre instituições administrativas, comerciantes e povos indígenas desde o período pós-jesuítico, auge do contrabando, até a administração dos últimos governos reformistas espanhóis, responsáveis por tentativas de interdição.

Enlightened physicians: setting out on an elite academic career in the second half of the eighteenth century.

In the second half of the eighteenth century, medical doctors faced heavy competition. They competed for patients and for institutional positions and sought a variety of means to enhance their reputations. Among rank-and-file physicians, some strove to respond to the high expectations and rational discourse fueled by Enlightenment philosophy. They aimed to build a new medicine on rational and empirical principals. Concentrating on the rich correspondence left by young physicians born in Geneva, this article maps out the social and moral dilemmas encountered by ambitious young physicians in the second half of the eighteenth century, who, like many thousands of others, flocked to Edinburgh, "the first medical school" in Europe. Conscious that they formed but one group among a series of possible practitioners, they pondered over cultural codes, civilities and economic realities as they strove to promote the figure of a knowledgeable, experienced, gentlemanlike physician.

TROPAS DE PRETOS E PARDOS EM MINAS GERAIS: o recrutamento para a guerra luso-castelhana (1766-1780)

O presente estudo analisou o recrutamento de pretos e pardos emMinas Gerais na segunda metade do século XVIII, dando ênfase ao perá­odocompreendido entre os anos de 1775 e 1777, ou seja, no momento em que seintensificaram os conflitos luso-castelhanos ocorridos nas partes meridionais daAmérica portuguesa. Para isso nos servimos de ampla documentação do ArquivoHistórico Ultramarino (Lisboa), disponá­vel através do Projeto Resgate.Cruzamos as informações obtidas na dita documentação, com outras relevantes ao tema abordado. Pretendeu-se,com isso, entender todo o processo envolvido no recrutamento de pretos e pardos para a guerra luso-castelhanadas partes meridionais da América portuguesa, bem como compreender o envio desses homens de cor para a áreade conflito, além das consequências polá­ticas, econômicas e, principalmente, sociais, que, nessa conjuntura, seseguiram na capitania de Minas Gerais.

A aurora do (forte)piano

Este artigo revisita a aurora do fortepiano, instrumento que se tornaria ponto de convergência no fazer musical de fins do século XVIII até meados do XX, e apresenta referências documentais sobre o início da invenção da mecânica de Bartolomeo Cristofori, bem como documentações de outros projetos não Cristoforianos.

Tropas de pretos e pardos em Minas Gerais: o recrutamento para a guerra luso-castelhana (1766-1780)

This paper was focused on the restructure of military institutions in Portuguese America in the secondhalf of Eighteenth Century, with the objective of examine the conjunctures involving Black Militias in thecaptaincy of Minas Gerais during the Luso-Castilian War. Between the decades of 1760 and 1780, Portugalintroduced the practice of recruit individuals coming from those social groups in its domains. In the State ofBrazil many captaincies were forced to adopt those direct solicitations from de Portuguese crown in that period.Each of the captaincies of the State of Brazil had to fulfill those exigencies in the manner that was possible. Thewar in the meridional parts of Portuguese America accelerate the military restructure in the Portuguese domains,but also occasioned the utilization of unprepared troops, conflicts between cities councils and governors, andalso debates about the use of slaves as soldiers.

O Diretório dos Índios e as Chefias Indígenas: Uma inflexão

Este artigo trata da transformação ocorrida no estatuto das chefias indígenas, ao longo da segunda metade do século XVIII, em função da introdução da lei do Diretório dos Índios. Essa lei teve por objetivo a regulação da liberdade concedida aos índios em seis de junho de 1755 e pretendeu, também, constituir um projeto de civilização das populações indígenas do Vale Amazônico. Nesse sentido, os processos de arregimentação daquelas populações acabou por empreender uma alteração na natureza das chefias nativas – antes constituídas em função de valores e processos tradicionais, elas passaram a se construir por meio da inserção na sociedade colonial do Vale e, conseqüentemente, na sua hierarquia.

Antonio's Devils: Writers of the Jewish Enlightenment and the Birth of Modern Hebrew and Yiddish Literature (review)

Antonio's Devils: Writers of Jewish Enlightenment and Birth of Modern Hebrew and Yiddish Literature, by Jeremy Dauber. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004. 354 pp. $60.00. All too often, literature and literary questions are addressed solely from their own narrow and self-contained disciplinary confines. Reacting, perhaps, to scholarly predilections of earlier generations, wherein literature was often pressed into service of history of ideas, contemporary scholars have generally insisted upon detaching study of literature from all matters historical. One of many significant contributions of Jeremy Dauber's Antonio's Devils is fact that he sets aside such scholarly inclinations and produces a book that is a wonderfully enriching exploration of literary texts, as well as a suggestive and intelligent foray in field of intellectual history. Dauber's subject is literature of Haskalah, Jewish Enlightenment, which flourished first in Prussia through second half of eighteenth century, and then a few decades later in Galicia. Dauber's key to understanding Haskalah and its variegated literatures and languages-literature written in German, Hebrew, and Yiddish-is use of textual allusion, that is, all manner of explicit and implicit allusion to earlier biblical and rabbinic canons. Given long tradition of allusiveness in Jewish literature, from intrabiblical references to poetry and prose of medieval scholars, focus on textual allusion is a particularly useful tool, one that beautifully captures complex lines of historical-cultural continuity even as they are fraught with far-reaching discontinuities. In Dauber's skilled hands and expertly trained eyes, an appreciation of textual allusion not only highlights rich tapestry of Maskilic literature, but also deepens our understanding of historical context that spawns modern Jewish literature, and beyond that, very tensions and challenges that shaped Jewish encounter with modernity. Dauber begins his book in a somewhat daring fashion with a chapter-long analysis of passage of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, in which Shylock alludes to a section of Genesis, triggering Antonio's famous quip that the devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. Dauber's intent, of course, is to illuminate a certain methodological approach, one that refers both to literary contexts of allusive material and historical and social factors that shaped ways in which that material was employed (p. …

Influence of various forcings on global climate in historical times using a coupled atmosphere–ocean general circulation model

The results of a simulation of the climate of the last five centuries with a state-of-the-art coupled atmosphere–ocean general circulation model are presented. The model has been driven with most relevant forcings, both natural (solar variability, volcanic aerosol) and anthropogenic (greenhouse gases, sulphate aerosol, land-use changes). In contrast to previous GCM studies, we have taken into account the latitudinal dependence of volcanic aerosol and the changing land cover for a period covering several centuries. We find a clear signature of large volcanic eruptions in the simulated temperature record. The model is able to simulate individual extreme events such as the “year without a summer” 1816. Warm periods in the early seventeenth century and the second half of eighteenth century occur in periods of increased solar irradiation. Strong warming is simulated after 1850, in particular over land, going along with an increase of the positive North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) phase. Consistent circulation anomalies are simulated in multidecadal means with similarity to observed and reconstructed anomalies, for example during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. The model is able to reproduce some of the observed or reconstructed regional patterns. We find that cooling around 1700 and at the end of the eighteenth century is less than in other studies, due to the relatively small variations in solar activity and the relatively modest volcanic forcing applied here. These cooling events are not restricted to Europe and North America, but cover most of the Northern Hemisphere. Colder than average conditions, for example during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, go along with a decrease in pressure difference between low and high latitudes and a decrease of the North Atlantic Oscillation. This favours positive sea ice anomalies east of Greenland and around Iceland, leading to widespread negative temperature anomalies over Europe. We also find characteristic blocking patterns over Western Europe, in particular during autumn, which contribute to the advection of cold air.

Reading the Early Republic (review)

Reading Early Republic. By Robert A. Ferguson. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. Pp. 358. Cloth, $45.00.)Robert Ferguson's new book sets out to recover particular meanings that circulated through a host of texts produced in America from Revolutionary War through mid-184Os. Ferguson starts with idea that meaning of language is bound by time and by context, so that when today we read or use words written two centuries ago, we are liable to misunderstand them, both by missing intended meanings and by ascribing to those words meanings more relevant to our own time and context. When modern wielders of early republican phraseology think they are using same language, they do so only in a literal sense, he writes. words themselves often held different meanings when first expressed, and every original expression came in a context now lost to easy comprehension (9-10). Ferguson's hope is to recapture original meanings of these words by considering how people who produced them and those who first received them operated with certain events, traditions of learning, literary forms, or rhetorical strategies in mind.The book's ten chapters are arranged in rough chronological order arid take up a wide range of texts. Chapter 1 explores contextual nuances of words by reading Hannah Foster's The Coquette (1797) alongside Venture Smith's 1798 narrative, an 1802 entry from diary of Nathaniel Ames, and Thomas Jefferson's first inaugural address. Chapter 2 considers a variety of texts, including John Dickinson's Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania (1768), to trace competing religious and secular ideas about that for Ferguson joins together in a distinctive dialectic of liberty (as chapter is titled) during second half of eighteenth century. In Chapter 3 focus turns to a single pamphlet, Common Sense, and to a consideration of how Thomas Paine managed to capture and propel a nation by telling a dark and brooding story in a particular way. Chapter 4, Becoming American, examines treachery of Benedict Arnold and trial of Major John Andre as a way into questions about loyalty and national identity in a time of rebellion. Chapter 5 moves to constitutional period by taking up John Jay's essays in The Federalist, arguing that Jay articulated a distinct aesthetics of ratification (157) that had him contributing far more to Federalist cause than has been recognized. Chapter 6 contends that many ways in which members of founding generation appealed to classical antiquity-in their Latin mottos, their historical paintings, their oratory, and their architecture-were not simply efforts to bind their own attempt at republican self-government to a noble tradition but were expressions of a reflective nostalgia that looked to past in order to find familiarity in bewildering present (195). In Chapter 7, Ferguson turns to Gabriel's Rebellion to examine both limits of republican and specter of failure in midst of revolutionary success. Chapter 8 considers Jefferson's lifelong obsession (218) with design and construction of Monticello as an avenue into distinctly Enlightenment symbolic universe he inhabited. Chapter 9 studies 1844 Girard case, which focused on questions about uses of charity, as a telling example of how the competitions of event and interpretation . …

The Telling of the Act: Sexuality as Narrative in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century France

This book tells how diverting array of pleasures in eighteenth-century libertine fiction gave way, through a process of thematic drift and realignment, to a powerfully linear story that actually defined sex and gender roles pertaining to it. Many of key notions in modern talk about sex are in fact narrative ones: climax, foreplay, and the sex act are all said to lie at heart of human sexuality. But 'The Telling of Act' questions whether these notions deserve to be thought of as timeless, and in fact locates their emergence in second half of eighteenth century.