America In The French Imaginary 1789 1914

Following the American Revolution, French observers often viewed the United States as a laboratory for the forging of new practices of liberté and égalité, in affinity with and divergence from France's own Revolutionary ideals and experiences. The volume examines French views through musical/theatrical portrayals of the American Revolution and Republic, soundscapes of the Statue of Liberty, and homages to the glorified figures of Washington, Franklin and Lafayette. Essays investigate paradoxical depictions of slavery in the United States and French Caribbean colonies of 'Amérique'. French critiques of American music and musicians, including the reception of Americanized or Creolized adaptations of European art traditions as well as American popular music and dance, are also presented. The subject of race features prominently in French interpretations of American music and identity. These interpretations see French constructions of the Indigenous American and African American "exotic" that intersect with tropes of noble, pastoral savagery, menacing barbarism, and the "civilizing" potency of French culture. The French reinterpretation of African American music and dance reveals both a revulsion of Black alterity and an attraction to the expressive freedom, and even subversiveness, of these "foreign" forms of music and dance. Contributions include essays by music, dance, theatre and opera scholars, and the volume will be essential reading for students and scholars of these disciplines.

During a period of tumultuous change in English political, religious and cultural life, music signified the unspeakable presence of the divine in the world for many. What was the role of music in the early modern subject's sensory experience of divinity? While the English intellectuals Peter Sterry (1613-72), Richard Roach (1662-1730), William Stukeley (1687-1765) and David Hartley (1705-57), have not been remembered for their 'musicking', this book explores how the musical reflections of these individuals expressed alternative and often uncustomary conceptions of God, the world, and the human psyche. Music is always potentially present in their discourse, emerging as a crucial form of mediation between states: exoteric and esoteric, material and spiritual, outer and inner, public and private, rational and mystical. Dixon shows how Sterry, Roach, Stukeley and Hartley's shared belief in truly universal salvation was articulated through a language of music, implying a feminising influence that set these male individuals apart from contemporaries who often strictly emphasised the rational-i.e. the supposedly masculine-aspects of religion. Musical discourse, instead, provided a link to a spiritual plane that brought these intellectuals closer to 'ultimate reality'. Theirs was a discourse firmly rooted in the real existence of contemporary musical practices, both in terms of the forms and styles implied in the writings under discussion and the physical circumstances in which these musical genres were created and performed. Through exploring ways in which the idea of music was employed in written transmission of elite ideas, this book challenges conventional classifications of a seventeenth-century 'Scientific Revolution' and an eighteenth-century 'Enlightenment', defending an alternative narrative of continuity and change across a number of scholarly disciplines, from seventeenth-century English intellectual history and theology, to musicology and the social history of music.

France and Women, 1789-1914 is the first book to offer an authoritative account of women's history throughout the nineteenth century. James McMillan, author of the seminal work Housewife or Harlot, offers a major reinterpretation of the French past in relation to gender throughout these tumultuous decades of revolution and war. This book provides a challenging discussion of the factors which made French political culture so profoundly sexist and in particular, it shows that many of the myths about progress and emancipation associated with modernisation and the coming of mass politics do not stand up to close scrutiny. It also reveals the conservative nature of the republican left and of the ingrained belief throughout french society that women should remain within the domestic sphere. James McMillan considers the role played by French men and women in the politics, culture and society of their country throughout the 1800s.

Annotation A sophisticated and groundbreaking book on what women actually did and what actually happened to them during the French Revolution.

Focusing on images of or produced by nineteenth-century European women, this volume explores genteel femininity as resistant to easy codification vis-à-vis the public. Attending to various iterations of the public as space, sphere and discourse, sixteen essays challenge the false binary construct that has held the public as the sole preserve of prosperous men. By considering works in a range of media by an array of canonical and understudied women artists, they demonstrate that definitions of both femininity and the public were mutually defining and constantly shifting.

In Socialism's Muse Naomi J. Andrews examines the gender dynamics in French romantic socialist writings, and the way it shaped the feminism of the movement. It will appeal to scholars of gender and intellectual history, as well as historians of romanticism, feminism, socialism, and modern European history.

This book relates some of the major trends within religion and politics to offer a historical framework with which to assess their interactions and a point of departure for studies to come. The study of the interrelationship between contemporary religious practice and modern politics is divided between several scholarly disciplines, all embracing different terminologies as well as multiple theoretical and philosophical premises. Such diversity of perspectives is to be welcomed, but it can inhibit the ability of academics to form a cohesive and coherent dialogue around the subject. While critically assessing the historic, sociological, political, theological and anthropological aspects of religion and politics, the book demonstrates the crucial importance of recognising the capitalist economy as the framework for understanding their dynamic relationship. Moreover, it claims that humanism is the proper lens through which to critically engage with religion in society and must be the favoured point of departure for any study within the field. This book offers a unique overarching viewpoint for of all these divergent scholarly trends and traditions. As such, it will be of significant use to academics in religious studies, political science, sociology and anthropology.

Focusing on images of or produced by well-to-do nineteenth-century European women, this volume explores genteel femininity as resistant to easy codification vis-?is the public. Attending to various iterations of the public as space, sphere and discourse, sixteen essays challenge the false binary construct that has held the public as the sole preserve of prosperous men. By contrast, the essays collected in Women, Femininity and Public Space in European Visual Culture, 1789-1914 demonstrate that definitions of both femininity and the public were mutually defining and constantly shifting. In examining the relationship between affluent women, femininity and the public, the essays gathered here consider works by an array of artists that includes canonical ones such as Mary Cassatt and Fran?s G?rd as well as understudied women artists including Louise Abb? and Broncia Koller. The essays also consider works in a range of media from fashion prints and paintings to private journals and architectural designs, facilitating an analysis of femininity in public across the cultural production of the period. Various European centers, including Madrid, Florence, Paris, Brittany, Berlin and London, emerge as crucial sites of production for genteel femininity, providing a long-overdue rethinking of modern femininity in the public sphere.