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Thèse--Faculté de Médecine de Paris. / Bibliography p. [86]-88.

European Enlightenment culture was a fundamental locus for the emergence and conceptualization of what has come to be called the "modern public sphere." In this study I analyse the figure of "the public" during roughly the third quarter of the eighteenth-century, primarily as refracted in the writings of three prominent German Aufklarer, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Thomas Abbt, and Johann Gottfried Herder. Scholarly discussion about the emergence of a German public sphere and "public opinion" has tended to focus on the latter decades of the eighteenth- century, with little awareness of the fact that earlier on, the notion of a "public" itself was being constituted and contested by "public writers" like Lessing, Abbt and Herder. This occurred within the context of what I am calling "the problem of Publikum," the particular German problem of social and political fragmentation. The writings of Lessing, Abbt arid Herder can be profitably understood as mediating between the wider European Republic of Letters and a more circumscribed, problematical German Publikum. By reading their works in light of Enlightenment discourses of science, sociability, aesthetics and politics-discourses that in one way or another touched upon the issue of a modern "public"--as well as in view of the "problem of Publikum" and the German social and intellectual scene generally, I am able to connect their intellectual content both with wider European currents and local German socio-political concerns. I argue that Lessing's dramatic and literary-critical work sought to constitute a German public that was both sympathetically responsive yet critically distanced from itself. Abbt, painfully aware of the "problem of Publikum," strove to inscribe a public sphere in the idiom of patriotism and morals. And Herder's intervention in an emerging German public sphere can be understood as building on the work of Abbt and Lessing to theorize the relationship between language, literature and the Publikum in a complex vision of "organic enlightenment." The dissertation employs a variety of primary and secondary sources, including works by an array of European thinkers who played a role in Lessing, Abbt and Herder's intellectual development. And it theorizes the developments profiled in light of contemporary theories of the public sphere and the social-psychology of George H. Mead, engaging questions of personal and social identity, inclusion/exclusion, and gender.

Alexander Pope’s 1743 Dunciad in Four Books and its preceding iterations were a reaction to rapidly shifting eighteenth-century culture. With the rise of Grub Street hack writers and undeserving Poet Laureates like Lewis Theobald and Colley Cibber, Pope saw the fall of British civilization. The mock-epic Dunciad portrays this degradation with the progress of the goddess Dulness through London and her eventual and inevitable return of Britain to darkness and chaos. Many of Pope’s contemporaries are depicted as acolytes of Dulness, with a complex footnote system explicating their inclusion on the basis of their works, political alignments, education, patronage, or even disagreements with Pope. These representations of eighteenth-century print culture are not only comedic on an individual level; rather, they participate in and reinforce Pope’s overarching satire. Within this context, the following study closely examines Pope’s satirical construction of the “dunce-head” with a particular focus on the physical aspects of the skulls of the dunces. The facial features of the dunces, whether dull, twisting, or asinine, are the most obvious visual indicators of Dulness. However, the satire is extended by Pope’s conception of the skull as a physical container, in which the brain fluids of the dunces are no better than lead or brass. The mud, owls, poets’ bays, and other materials perched on the dunces’ crowns also contribute to the parody. Finally, Pope’s establishment of the dunce-head as a passive object, with the few notable exceptions such as its propensity for noise-making, concludes the study. These crucial visual signifiers and their combination with Pope’s complex abstract conception of Dulness shifts the dunce-head from mere caricature and mocked object to a satirical symbol. The Dunciad, a brilliant lampoon of eighteenth century print culture, has an archetypal skull at the center of its satire: the dull, braying, filth-covered dunce-head.

This thesis analyses the simplification of fashion in the French "beau monde" at the end of the eighteenth century. It reveals that the simplified fashion of the 1770s and 1780s was the result of a new feeling for nature. New perceptions of the body led physicians to plead for a new fashion, more respectful of the natural characters of the body. On the aesthetic level, natural simplicity was meant to be the only way to recover original truth and energy. Moreover, anglomania, by way of sustained exchanges with England, contributed to the development of a simpler and more egalitarian fashion. This new feeling for nature reflects profound changes in the French society at the end of the century. The idea of nature, defined according to the values and ideals of a rising bourgeoisie, conveyed a bourgeois spirit no longer restricted to a narrow social group.

In four pieces selected from the late Baroque repertoire, the "Allemanda" from Corelli's Sonata for Violin and Continuo, Opus 5, No. 8, the "Allemande" from Bach's Clavierubung, Partita, No. 1, the chorus, "Thy Right Hand, Oh Lord" from Handel's Israel in Egypt, and the aria duetto, "Mein Freund ist Mein" from Cantata No. 140, Wachet Auf, by Bach, harmonic, melodic and motivic parameters are analysed and graphed so that their integration in each work is readily observable. Then, in an attempt to establish more general formal models similar to those developed by Arnold Schoenberg, Erwin Ratz, and William E. Caplin for the classical style, recurring patterns of integration are noted. Of special significance is the prominence of acceleration processes in each piece and their diversity, both in the parameters involved, as well as in the structural levels on which these processes operate.

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Inaug.-Diss. Medizinische Fak der Univ. Bern, 1995. / Am Kopf der Titelseite: Aus dem Medizinhistorischen Institut der Universität Bern. Bibliogr.: S. 82-85.