In the discussions about contemporary celebrities, the femme fatale, the bad boy, the child star, and the wannabe have become accepted and even celebrated figures. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, however, actors and actresses who challenged acceptable strategies for celebrity behavior were often punished by exile, debt, disgrace, and humiliation. Some performers even faced a veritable textual and historical oblivion. Illegitimate Celebrity considers the careers of Dorothy Jordan, William Henry West Betty, Edmund Kean, and Margaret Agnes Bunn, and offers a historical genealogy of "illegitimate" performers who dared to break with social convention and struggled to define and redefine themselves according to strict social codes that dictated their behavior both onstage and off. By examining celebrity productions, portraits, caricatures, and performances as elements to producing celebrity, I demonstrate how the audiences used these public figures to create complex narratives regarding class, femininity, masculinity, marriage, nationalism, among others. Ultimately, the study of illegitimate celebrity reveals the role of celebrity in shaping these discursive structures and provides an important history for modern narratives regarding the role of celebrity in society. / McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts; / English / PhD; / Dissertation;

This study provides a new account of the evolution of the eighteenth-century British novel by reading it as a response to contemporary interest in, and self-consciousness about, print communication. During the eighteenth century, print went from being a marginal technology to being one with an increasingly wide circulation and a diverse range of applications. The pervasive adoption of print generated anxiety about its positive and negative effects, prompting a series of responses from writers. Examining the work of five British novelists from across the long eighteenth century, this dissertation investigates the influence of eighteenth-century philosophical thinking about human understanding and social interaction on the assumptions that these novelists made about the way their work would be received. In particular, this thesis explores the ways in which these novelists respond to contemporary philosophical ideas about the cognitive functions of the imagination by experimenting with the form of their work in order to generate new kinds of reception. But this study also shows that, while these five novelists drew on the tenets of eighteenth-century moral philosophy, their work exposed a number of the limitations of that philosophy by putting it into practice. Each chapter in this study focuses on a different aspect of the intersection of mediation and imagination. Chapter One considers the ways in which Locke's understanding of probability informed Richardson's attempts to promote specific affective reading practices with his epistolary fictions and editorial commentary. Chapter Two reads Sterne's manipulations of the material page in Tristram Shandy as an attempt to expose the limitations of print communication and to suggest new ways of reading that could overcome those limitations. Chapter Three examines the writing of Smith, Kames, Mackenzie, Reeve and Godwin in order to illustrate both the promise and the danger that these authors attribute to imaginative sympathy and to the reading practices that promote sympathetic reactions. Chapter Four explores Scott's experiments with a form of fiction that could collapse the distance between writing and orality in order to force readers to reevaluate the complex relationship of sound and writing in the establishment of communities in an age of print.

This project report analyzes the emergence of categories of sexual deviancy as they appear in selected medical treatises from the eighteenth century. Terms such as homosexual or lesbian were not yet available in medical or public discourse but the early modern writers did use a variety of other references to establish the existence of such categories. For instance, one might label deviants as hermaphrodites, eunuchs, sodomites, or monsters to describe what were perceived as unnatural forms of sexual expression which ostensibly posed a threat to the social order largely because they were not procreative, but also because of the fear that they might produce children of the same ilk. Moreover, the sudden explosion in scientific and medical knowledge during the Enlightenment created a need for the organization and classification of such knowledge, as well as a fascination with anomalies and how they might be cured. My argument is that four of these deviant categoriesthe chronic masturbator, tribades or hermaphrodites, mollies (or effeminate male homosexuals), and eunuchswere considered unnatural because they fell outside normative prescriptions of acceptable sexual conduct that was based primarily on pro-natal and pro-nutpial ideologies. I rely on experts in eighteenth-century scholarship, such as Rictor Norton, Randolph Trumbach, Thomas Laqueur, Robert Darby, Thomas A. King, and George Rousseau, to inform my discussion of writings from this period. Although contemporary scholars in this field have made significant contributions to our knowledge of early modern understandings of sexual deviancy, relatively few of them seem to have investigated how medical treatises on generation provided a scientific basis for the marginalization of specific types of people. By identifying these types under the larger category of generation, I argue that these medical texts and popular sexologies function as vehicles of social control by emphasizing that the only legitimate form of sexual expression was within the context of marriage and that its sole purpose was for reproduction.

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Olaudah Equiano or Gustavas Vassa may have had abolitionist motivations when writing The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavas Vassa, the African, Written by Himself, but the function of the text is much different and self-serving. Specifically, in looking closely at the wording of the text, with its language of we versus they, in group versus out group, ours versus theirs, Equiano clearly feels he at no time belongs fully to any specific group or place; rather, he only partially belongs anywhere, and thus, creates this work of autobiography and appropriation of fiction and oral tradition to negotiate and cultivate his own liminal, or even heterotopic, space. In other words, I suggest he may have used the writing of this text to define his sense of self, creating a space in which he was both in control and fully belonged.

This project report analyzes the emergence of categories of sexual deviancy as they appear in selected medical treatises from the eighteenth century. Terms such as homosexual or lesbian were not yet available in medical or public discourse but the early modern writers did use a variety of other references to establish the existence of such categories. For instance, one might label deviants as hermaphrodites, eunuchs, sodomites, or monsters to describe what were perceived as unnatural forms of sexual expression which ostensibly posed a threat to the social order largely because they were not procreative, but also because of the fear that they might produce children of the same ilk. Moreover, the sudden explosion in scientific and medical knowledge during the Enlightenment created a need for the organization and classification of such knowledge, as well as a fascination with anomalies and how they might be cured. My argument is that four of these deviant categoriesthe chronic masturbator, tribades or hermaphrodites, mollies (or effeminate male homosexuals), and eunuchswere considered unnatural because they fell outside normative prescriptions of acceptable sexual conduct that was based primarily on pro-natal and pro-nutpial ideologies. I rely on experts in eighteenth-century scholarship, such as Rictor Norton, Randolph Trumbach, Thomas Laqueur, Robert Darby, Thomas A. King, and George Rousseau, to inform my discussion of writings from this period. Although contemporary scholars in this field have made significant contributions to our knowledge of early modern understandings of sexual deviancy, relatively few of them seem to have investigated how medical treatises on generation provided a scientific basis for the marginalization of specific types of people. By identifying these types under the larger category of generation, I argue that these medical texts and popular sexologies function as vehicles of social control by emphasizing that the only legitimate form of sexual expression was within the context of marriage and that its sole purpose was for reproduction.

From the middle to the late eighteenth century, England prospered due to growing number of industries and revenues from foreign trade. Being economically available, people valued quality of lifestyle, including having amateur musical performances in social gatherings. Popular musical productions at the time, other than solo music, included also chamber music, such as accompanied keyboard sonatas. In these types of works, the performers could invite the guests to join in the performance, yet also demonstrating his or her own tastes and skills. František Kocžwara¡¦s (1750-1791) The Battle of Prague was one of the most favored piece of works by the English amateur musicians. Due to its moderate level of required performance skills and magnificent effect of the sounds, the amateur musicians were able to perform well in front of their guests, while bring the atmosphere of musical gathering to a high peak. This paper consists of three sections. The first section discusses the development of English music, its influences from local social factors, ands the rise of amateur musicians. The following section discusses the musical form which is mostly favored by amateur pianist in the late eighteenth century - accompanied keyboard sonatas - with depth into its historical background, social functions, and music arrangement. The final section discusses the life of Czech musician, František Kocžwara, and his accompanied keyboard sonatas published in 1788 The Battle of Prague. Through detailed description of the musical style and relationship between the main and the accompanying parts, a better understanding may be formed regarding the non main-trend composers and the elegant lifestyle of the English amateur musical life.

Ancient Egyptian belief in an afterlife influenced a wide variety of architectural and art forms. In the Eighteenth Dynasty at Thebes, non-royal officials were equipped with tombs that were decorated to aid in their everlasting sustenance and rebirth in the hereafter as well as commemorate them to living visitors. Part of this continuation of life involved the participation of the funerary cult of the deceased, as well as the prompting of visitors to speak the owner’s name and provide the required offerings—allowing (and encouraging) public access to the decorated tomb chapel. However, some visitors wished to harm the deceased’s perpetuation of life. In order to obliterate the memory of the tomb owner in the minds of the living and his existence in the afterlife, enemies carefully hacked the tomb owner’s images out of the decoration program in an act of damnatio memoriae. The owners of Theban tombs 66, 75, and 76 fell victim to this intentional destruction by contemporary hands.

Research into the material culture of the household and the domestic interior has increased rapidly during recent years. It has primarily focused on the appearance and use of domestic space leaving household management and maintenance a neglected area of study. Furthermore the relationship between the ownership of goods, the domestic interior and the use of the home has not been studied in conjunction with the management and maintenance of the household. Additionally, research into the material culture of the household has predominantly focused on quantitative changes experienced during the late seventeenth century and early eighteenth. It has long been established that the ownership of household goods increased in this period, but similar research has not taken place to explore the nature of these goods, nor to extend this work to the subsequent period. This thesis brings these aspects of research together for the first time to create a synthesis between the ownership of goods and the changing nature and use of the home and household maintenance and management. The argument proposed here suggests that the changing nature of the material culture of the household and developments to the use of the home had an impact upon the way that the household was managed and maintained. The complex inter-woven relationship between the material culture of the domestic interior and the ways in which it was maintained and managed reveals that both elements were a part of an emerging middle class culture of domesticity. Therefore, this thesis makes a significant contribution to a holistic understanding of the household by looking at the ownership of goods and the use of domestic space within the context of maintenance and management.

The present study examines a specific form of literary memorialization of Scottishness, stubborn and elusive as that term might be, under the concrete political, social, and economic conditions of the late eighteenth-century. It holds that literary history and criticism can make a significant contribution to understanding Scottish history, both in its own terms and in relation to British history writ large. It inserts into these histories a much wider range of late eighteenth-century Scottish poets than previous scholarship and deepens our understanding of the cultural and discursive manifestations of British state formation under the extreme stress of war and revolution. It also reveals the way the political crisis of the French Revolution converged with pre-existing concerns about the impact of union on the Scottish economy and society, as well as with shared Anglo-Scottish critiques of state power that feature so prominently in the political history of this period. Many of the poets studied here have never figured significantly in political, cultural, or literary histories of the period and, with a few notable exceptions, no analysis of their poetry, whether in political or literary terms, has yet occurred. Consequently, this study brings both historical and literary analysis to bear on a large and diverse group of Scottish poets with a range of political and aesthetic perspectives that reflect not only on the question of Scottish, English, and British "identities," but on the formation of British poetry more generally. / text