This thesis takes a material culture approach to exploring how the Thames was experienced from 1660 to 1830. It conceives of the river as a material object, constantly shaped by its designers, makers and users. The river was an essential part of the day-to-say lives of Londoners and visitors and framing the river as a kind of object allows an exploration of the material-human interactions on a number of different levels, from transformative changes to the river's geography to more everyday contact at work, leisure and home. The thesis understands the river's changing relationship to key transformations in Britain's long eighteenth century as London became the metropolis of an expanding commercial and territorial empire. The first chapter addresses the redesigning of the river, tracing the building projects imposed by political and mercantile interest groups which transformed riverfront architecture with six new bridges and vast dock complexes and aimed to control how people experienced the river's relationship to the nation and its growing empire. The second chapter uses watermen's court records and criminal trials alongside material remnants of river work to show that watermen asserted an informal control over the river space which was increasingly eroded by the desire to secure imperial trade against theft. Chapter three explores the growing use of the river as leisure space, using diaries to identify quotidian leisure activities on the river. It highlights the increasing commercialisation of riverine leisure as boat trips and guidebooks proliferated. The final chapter uses objects depicting the Thames to show how the river filtered into everyday lives through consumption, often constructing a picturesque view for a polite audience. Like the other material engagements with the river, these objects constructed an experience of the eighteenth-century waterway which glorified commerce and obscured from everyday experience the realities of an imperial river.

Abstract Roxana is Defoe¡¦s last novel and his only one that ends in tragedy. In the eighteenth century when the idea of realism prevailed, the novel was a reflection of social reality. Unlike a romance in which love and imaginary adventures are depicted, a novel depicts ordinary people and their ordinary life. Based on this idea of realism, Defoe¡¦s Roxana touches its readers. This novel is mainly about how the heroine Roxana, a deserted woman, struggles to make money and how her mental state changes. Yet reading through the story, what readers learn is not only Roxana¡¦s tragedy in fighting through her life, but also, beyond that, the relationship between a woman and the society she lives in. Under the control of patriarchy, a woman, whether reliant on a man or independent, is doomed to be a loser. In order to give as full as possible a perspective about the process of Roxana¡¦s making money, I put many issues in the thesis, including gender, capital, marriage, morality and psychology. This thesis falls into six parts. The introduction gives a general idea of the rise of the novel in the eighteenth century and of Defoe¡¦s life. The first chapter deals with Roxana¡¦s marriage, exploring the reasons for her refusal of marriage and the possible results she may have to face if she remains unmarried. In the second chapter, I will discuss Roxana¡¦s business of prostitution, focusing on how she succeeds in making money by her body and beauty. In Chapter Three, I attempt to analyze the two Roxanas¡Xthe public Roxana and the private Roxana¡Xto see how she takes advantage of disguise in presenting a public self but still possesses a guilty feeling when she is alone. Here, I would like to apply Bakhtin¡¦s two terms ¡§centrifugal¡¨ and ¡§centripetal¡¨ to Roxana¡¦s public self and private self respectively. In the last chapter, I intend to use Freud¡¦s psycho-analysis to explain the three characters¡XRoxana, Amy and Susan¡Xand conclude with the unbalanced mental state that brings about Roxana¡¦s psychological chaos.

The purpose of this project is to shed light on three female laboring-class poets who have gone largely overlooked by scholars of eighteenth-century studies, Mary Leapor, Ann Yearsley, and Janet Little. This paper argues that when discussed together these poets exemplify the shift from Augustan models of intellectualism to proto-Romantic thought. Issues of literary patronage and trend are highlighted in this thesis as the laboring-class poetic tradition enjoyed a long vogue in the eighteenth-century. Chapter One offers a look in the literary marketplace of the period and what scholars have said about the subject of laboring-class writing so far. Chapters Two, Three, and Four focus on the poetry of Leapor, Yearsley, and Little, with particular attention to tribute poems with the goal of highlighting the role of laboring-class writers from Augustan poetry to proto-Romantic poetry.

Public representation of highwaymen and footpads in the press spawned a climate of fear in London.  Descriptions of the violence that highwaymen and footpads employed in the course of their crimes generated this fear.  Violence set them apart from other non- or less-violent thefts that occurred in much greater numbers in the capital, but received less coverage in the public discussion of crime at the time.  Victims of robbery came from all different social classes and demographic groups, and this too contributed to the fear by creating an image of robbers who could attack anyone at any time.  This ardent fear appeared to have overshadowed some of the new social and economic explanations of criminals' motives and emerging humanitarian approaches to crime prevention. The court records suggest that highwaymen and footpads were often young men who operated in organized gangs and used violence to create fear and ensure success in their attack -- and this paralleled the public perceptions.  However, the trials show that women did in fact account for a small -- but noticeable -- percentage of robbers, and robbers also acted individually as well as in groups.  The court proceedings also <demonstrated that highwaymen and footpads created networks with prostitutes, alehouses, pawnshops, and workhouses in order find potential victims, recruit new robbers, peddle pilfered goods, and increase the odds of successfully accomplishing their crime and escaping. / Master of Arts

In this thesis I assert that Robinson’s theatrical heritage positioned her uniquely to confront the revolutionary explosions of 1790s radical thought. In her writings, Robinson’s onstage experience of gender performativity is transformed into a bold feminist critique of gender roles for women (and men) everywhere. In Chapter 1, I study writings by eighteenth-century theatrical women to argue that Robinson’s feminism must be understood within a theatrical context to appreciate the unique radicalism of her feminist vision. In Chapter 2, I explore how Robinson’s powerful identification with Marie Antoinette lies at the roots of her feminist project. In Chapter 3, I explain how Robinson then turns to the voice of Sappho to develop a radical vision of transcendent genius. In Chapter 4, I demonstrate how Robinson turns her critique of gender on men through the performative space of the masquerade in Walsingham (1797). Finally, in Chapter 5, I explain how this radical feminist critique is moulded to utopian ends in The Natural Daughter (1799), as Robinson rewrites the ending of Wollstonecraft’s Wrongs of Woman in a vision of the revolutionary family. I read three strands into Robinson’s feminism: 1) the rejection of incommensurable sexual difference; 2) the union of rational virtue and benevolent sensibility in the development of transcendent genius; and 3) a radical critique of the anxious crisis in 1790s masculinity. The result of this was a utopian vision of the future quite different from Wollstonecraft’s better-known brand of ascetic feminism. Instead, Robinson’s feminist theory works to rescue the original values of the French Revolution from beneath the ravages of Jacobin corruption. Beyond the limiting categories of incommensurable sexual difference, Robinson envisions a family in which woman would no longer have to renounce her sexual body in order to engage with society, and man could finally accept her as his equal.

This thesis is concerned with the science of geography in the German states during the ‘long’ eighteenth century, c.1690 – c.1815. It speaks to recent scholarly debates in historical geography, the history of science, book history, and Enlightenment studies. The thesis investigates the forms taken by eighteenth-century German geography, its meanings, and practices. This is of particular interest, since this topic is understudied. The thesis is based upon an analysis of geographical print (books and periodicals) and manuscript correspondence. The thesis proposes that geography’s definition was understood as ‘description of the earth’. The interpretative meaning of this definition, geography’s purpose in print, and its educational practice (content and methods) were, in contrast, debated. The thesis suggests that geographical print – in the form of books and periodicals – served two main purposes: progress in geography, guided by the aim of scientific ‘completeness,’ and progress of society, guided by the aim of human improvement. In chapter 1, I outline the main topics and the structure of the thesis. Chapter 2 reviews the background of the thesis, and offers a partial historiographic and conceptual overview of the relevant themes. In chapter 3, I show that the Holy Roman Empire was characterised by fragmented political, religious, urban, and scholarly landscapes. The German emphasis on ‘writing’ geography ‘completely’ was partly, I argue, a way to transcend this fragmentation in an imagined ‘geographical republic of letters’. The emphasis on writing geography systematically was a way to justify the German wish for greater scholarly recognition on part of their foreign ‘colleagues’ who more opportunities to participate in geographical expeditions overseas and in colonial politics. In chapter 4, I argue that the classification of geography and geography’s relation to other sciences were debated. In consequence, geographical practice and use – geography’s writing and teaching – affected its interpretative meaning. In chapter 5, I go on and suggest that geography was a sedentary science aimed at improvement in geography and of society. Geographical print production and its evolution reflect the iii urban and religious landscapes of the empire. Geographical print was produced across the German states and, particularly, in the Protestant – middle and central German – states. This leads in chapter 6 to an analysis of geographical education and the suggestion that wide-spread conservatism in geographical instruction reflects the education aim for social utility and personal ‘eudaimonia’, as well as and an adherence to given social and political structures. In conclusion (chapter 7), the main findings of this thesis shed light on the production and use of geography in the German states during the ‘long’ eighteenth century, and the history of geography more generally. In discussing the relationship between Enlightenment thought and geography, the thesis extends our knowledge on German intellectual history, and contributes to our understanding of the geographies of Enlightenment geographical knowledge and practice.

My dissertation argues for a fundamental reorientation of our approach to public intimacy and identifies a lushly pragmatic rhetorical schema via which black, white, and Native women enter colonial American public life. I contend that these early American women employ the language of personal intimacy -- familial, spiritual, domestic -- to craft wide-ranging public interventions. Through references to their private affiliations, they associate themselves with others who share their religious, economic, political, and social concerns and thereby forge semi-public communities. I demonstrate that because such language retains women's often un-egalitarian and un-affective experiences of quotidian intimacy and therefore appears "natural" for women, it masks the radicalism, formal and substantive, of their interventions. Thus, in making public issues intimate, these women discreetly authorize and advance their interests. They use the same techniques whether they are preaching religious principles, positing alternative political models, or promoting preferred agricultural commodities. I rely upon an interdisciplinary body of scholarship, including studies of anthropology, religion, and economic, political, and regional history, to produce dense local studies. Yet, since I interrogate an array of authors and genres -- published and manuscript poetry, diplomatic and legal documents, commonplace books, spiritual diaries, autobiographies, and letters -- my project synthesizes those studies into a history that is multi-denominational, multi-racial, multi-class, and multi-regional. / text

This paper analyzes the financial and professional circumstances of two single working women in early-to-mid eighteenth-century Lyon. Using the documents deposited in court for their debt investigations, the author examines the matrix of credit, reputation, and gender to understand the challenges facing working women in an increasingly professionalized world, as well as the ways women sought to appropriately represent themselves in court. Several key challenges working women faced are highlighted; women who did not successfully negotiate these challenges might find themselves in court for debt litigation. These challenges included collecting debts (in specie), activating community and regional patronage networks, exercising control over property, and claiming gendered authority against the threat of male-controlled guilds. In response, both women constructed narratives of charitable activity to refute their charges; the documents submitted to the court evince both women's charitable activity in Lyon. By casting themselves as philanthropists they engaged gender and class categories to create an appropriately feminine reputation that would still allow for transacting money and labor. / text

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This research project will examine the concept of sovereignty in Vermont for the years 1750-1791. As with most conceptual studies, it is necessary to first examine the history of the concept. I begin with René Descartes (1596-1650), and his re-conceptualization of Man in a natural state. It is my contention that his metaphysical and ontological findings in Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) were then adopted by Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) in Leviathan (1651), and John Locke (1632-1704) in Two Treatises of Government (1689). Basing their philosophies on Descartes's "revised" depiction of Man in nature, both Hobbes and Locke envisioned a Man who naturally made both rational and passionate decisions, as communities transitioned, via the process of government formation, from the state of nature into the state of "civil society," as they termed it. Contemporaneous with this theoretical evolution was the inclusion of "the people" in British governance through the rise of Parliament at the turn of the seventeenth century. Juxtaposed with real events, the philosophers' reconceptualization demonstrates an evolving concept of sovereignty in the British state. By the time of the American Revolution, the concept of popular sovereignty was born, and "the people" ascended in both political theory and political reality. Because the eighteenth-century concept of sovereignty was based heavily on the metaphor of the state of nature, I chose the inhabitants of the New Hampshire Grants as a case study. These residents believed they resided in something close to a literal state of nature from 1760-1777, and that they had lived the theoretical philosophies of Hobbes, Locke, and other contemporary theorists. Once the theoretical description of a natural state is juxtaposed with the socio-political history of the Grants region, it is clear that inhabitants believed the Colony of New York, the appendage of the British state which claimed authority in the region, did not provide efficient governance for the residents. After the American Revolution broke out, Grants residents claimed it was their natural right to erect a state and systematically replace New York. Once Vermont's constitution went into effect in 1778, the concept of sovereignty was expressed in response to two simultaneous processes: the first, the geo-political stabilization of the state in the midst of both war and constant challenges to the state's existence; the second, the Vermont people transforming from a blend of "Yorkers" and "Yankees" into Vermonters. Both of these processes were complete by the mid-1780s as surrounding states and former Yorkers grew to accept the legitimacy of Vermont. By the late 1780s, as the United States Constitutional Convention was underway, Vermont was no longer considered a "pretended state," and was able to face the convention on its own terms, representing its own sovereign people.