This dissertation examines representations of authorship and subjecthood in the Romantic period as products of market position and publishing mode. In doing so, it views the traditional concept of Romantic individualism commonly associated with the solitary poet as a strategy developed to help the author navigate a complex writer’s market. Rather than focusing upon individualism as the defining authorial model for this period, however, my project presents it as one example of a diverse range of representational strategies employed by different authors operating from different positions within the market. To this end, this study compares the authorial model of the independent poet with authors engaged in a variety of other modes of publishing, including hack essayists, serialized poets, periodical editors, and celebrity authors. By examining authors operating across different publishing modes, I demonstrate that each one’s concept of public identity is shaped principally by his or her particular market position, as defined by working relationships with peers, involvement in the particulars of publishing, exchanges with the critical press, and engagement with readers. These authors include William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Charles Lamb, and Francis Jeffrey. By juxtaposing their different models of authorship, this study seeks to bridge the longstanding discourse regarding the social isolation of the Romantic poet with more contemporary streams of scholarship into the material realities of the nineteenth-century publishing industry. Drawing upon the social philosophy of the Frankfurt School and Eric Gans’ theory of Generative Anthropology, I examine how different strategies of representation were developed to preserve personal meaning and sustain public attention. By comparing responses to the rise of the writer’s market and the ubiquity of print culture, this dissertation argues that Romantic period authors demonstrate a distinctly modern understanding of public identity as a product of mediation in mass media culture.

In 1883 a group of Belgian artists wishing to challenge the hegemony of the Brussels Academy founded the organization, Les Vingt, on the principles of egalitarianism and artistic freedom and elected Octave Maus, editor of the self-proclaimed avant-garde journal, L'Art Moderne, as its secretary. Henceforth, Les Vingt assumed the identity of Belgium's leading visual exponent of modernité and L'Art Moderne became its foremost champion. In actuality, the alliance the Vingtistes formed with L'Art Moderne allowed Octave Maus and his co-editor Edmund Picard to gain control of the group's operations. The journal's editors, through their association with the Belgian social reform movement, had formulated an artistic concept they called l'art social and Les Vingt was to become the incarnation of this new doctrine of social art. During the period of 1887 to 1889, however, while the Belgian workers' movement erupted in a succession of strikes and demonstrations, Maus and Picard radically changed their strategy in marketing Les Vingt to its viewing public. They campaigned for a revised, "depoliticized" avant-garde identity for the group, and the model they chose to represent this new identity was French divisionism. The group's appropriation of divisionism, however, signified a forfeiture of many of the group's original ideals. Furthermore, it became a point of conflict for those Vingtistes who chose to remain loyal to their own styles. This conflict is evident in the case of James Ensor, one of the group's important founding members. During this period, he developed his own personal imagery that was a synthesis of Flemish and modern themes and motifs. This imagery made a bold, critical attack upon Les Vingt's capitulation to French divisionism, which signified an acqui-esence to the ardently Francophile tastes of the Brussels bourgeoisie. The focus of this thesis is an analysis of Les Vingt's avant-garde identity as it evolved out of its relationship with L'Art Moderne, and how that relationship led to the importation of divisionism. Ensor's conflict with Les Vingt and his provocative Flemish imagery is also examined as a means of assessing the significance of Les Vingt's adoption of the French art style. / Arts, Faculty of / Art History, Visual Art and Theory, Department of / Graduate

On December 10, 1835 the Federal Diet of the German Confederation banned the publication and distribution of any works written by a group identified as "das junge Deutschland." The Diet explicitly named Karl Gutzkow, Heinrich Laube, Theodor Mundt, Ludolf Wienbarg, and Heinrich Heine as members of this group. Since 1835 the term "Young Germany" has been widely accepted among historians and literary analysts alike. However, there has been virtually no agreement regarding the purposes of the group, its importance, or even its membership. In recent years, historical studies have gradually come to accept that the notion of a unified group called "Young Germany" is a myth, but no study has attempted to identify the key issues which divided the so-called Young Germans. This study examines the content of the 'Young German' works in the years prior to the Federal ban in order to determine the nature of the disagreements which divided Gutzkow, Laube, Mundt and Wienbarg. By utilizing the voluminous monographic and journalistic works produced by the socalled Young Germans, this study establishes their positions on many of the key issues of the Vormarz era, in particular, the emancipation of women, religious emancipation and Saint- Simonianism, and political emancipation. Based upon these positions, this study argues that there was little consensus among the core 'members.' Each man believed that he was contributing to the creation of a new type of literature which would end the Romantic separation of literature from the real world and usher in a more utilitarian form of writing. The author would no longer serve only the muses of literature, he would also serve more practical causes. Beyond this shared conviction, however, there were few issues upon which Gutzkow, Laube, Mundt and Wienbarg agreed. Moreover, even on the basic assumption that writers and their works must serve practical causes there was considerable conflict regarding the implementation of this ideal. On the larger socio-political issues of the day there was virtually no agreement. Some of the 'Young Germans' expressed fairly traditional opinions on these topics, others were remarkably modern. Seldom if ever, however, did they speak with one voice. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate

The Royal Academy exhibition of 1832 opened in London in the midst of a political crisis over the passage of the Great Reform Bill. An analysis of the critical response to four of the leading pictures in the exhibition: A Family Portrait by C.R. Leslie, The Preaching of Knox by David Wilkie, The Destroying Angel by William Etty, and Chiide Harold's Pilgrimage - Italy by J.M.W. Turner, provides evidence that the ongoing political conflict permeated the Academy exhibition. In an atmosphere of increasing tension caused by parliamentary deadlock and street rioting, art critics argued about the pictures' quality and meaning in highly politicized terms. This investigation focuses upon these four pictures and their critical reception, in order to probe the extent to which art and politics were connected at that specific historical moment. Documentary evidence of viewer responses is provided by anonymous reviews of the pictures which were published in ten major London newspapers and journals during the weeks following the opening of the show. The bias of each publication is carefully examined since, during the 1830's, most publications were highly partisan affairs, often receiving direct subsidies from particular interest groups. The analysis of these paintings offers a new perspective on the tensions, alignments, shifts, and ambiguities of British social classes and political parties in 1832. While the reception of Leslie's portrait points out the short-term divisions between Whigs and Tories over the issue of parliamentary reform, that of Wilkie1s history painting demonstrates that despite their differences, these two groups were united by a shared fear of the radical working class. Etty's academic sketch provides an example of how members of the conservative upper class rationalized rejecting the notion of reform, while Turner's landscape reveals how progressive middle-class reformers challenged tradition with a positive assertion of modernity. By examining the response to these pictures, one finds there is no clear separation between political and artistic spheres. / Arts, Faculty of / Art History, Visual Art and Theory, Department of / Graduate

This manuscript examines the cultural history of rural North China, as seen through the production, circulation, content and interpretation of graphic wood-block prints, known as nianhua. The spatial focus is on a fixed set of print producing villages on the North China plain. The temporal focus encompasses the late 1800s through the early 1960s. In examining how nianhua were produced and distributed in late 19th and early 20th century North China, I show that the village print industry was prescriptive in organization. This organization was a basic factor in delimiting form and iconography in print, since it imposed limits on the free appropriation of texts, and directed the way in which they were read. Having accounted for these factors, I consider how perceptions of the social, physical and ethical world were put into print, and how print in turn configured perceptions of the world. Since print is thus socially derived, print and its interpretation are considered in terms of responses to social change, and the capacity of print to effect change. The environment in which village print is structured is variously considered to be formed by the following: the physical space of the home; late-imperial narrative structures (and their residual perpetuation beyond the decline of the political regime); narrative structures produced through technological change and expanded translocal experience; and state-centred reform beginning in the Republican era, and reaching its conclusion under communism. I conclude that narratives which began as superscriptive and authoritative structures, were appropriated and re-structured by the specific conditions of the production, distribution, and display of print in the village. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

In 19th-Century America, upper- and middle-class sites of ice cream consumption were exclusive landscapes that conveyed through their design and advertisement ideals formed in European spa culture a century before. European spas promoted pastoralism, escapism, health, and leisure, all concepts that could also be found in American early 19th century pleasure gardens, mid-19th century ice cream parlors, and late 19th century soda fountains. These landscapes reveal how spa culture was intertwined with white gentility and sought to keep the lower classes and black people from enjoying the same resort experiences. By studying landscapes of consumption, we can better understand not only food culture, but also the ways social and cultural norms were enacted and enforced.