Britain's foreign relations formed a crucial component of the political nation during the eighteenth century. Foreign affairs were a key issue of state, and perceived failure within European power politics could cause the fall of government ministries. Britain's foreign relations with the main European powers, and especially France and Spain, have been extensively recorded. Britain's unique relationship with Corsica has been neglected. Corsica can appear to be insignificant compared to other European states. Many British writers, however, government officials, naval and military officers, considered Corsica to be of the highest importance within eighteenth-century foreign affairs. Corsica was especially important within the larger sphere of Anglo-French rivalry. Corsica was one of the few territories that was ruled by both nations during the eighteenth century. This thesis reveals that Britain's relations with Corsica were far more significant than has been previously realised. Britain's relations and interactions with Corsica remained relatively consistent throughout the period from 1728 up until 1796. The two main developments to occur between Britain and Corsica during the eighteenth century were, firstly, the ‘Corsican crisis' (1768-1769) and, secondly, the establishment of an Anglo-Corsican Kingdom (1794-1796). These are discussed in chapter 2 and chapter 4 of the thesis respectively. Both of these ‘events' have been studied as being separate from each other and as confined to their respective periods of time. This thesis aims to link and to compare these two key developments for the first time, and to show that the Corsican crisis directly influenced the Anglo-Corsican constitution in 1794.Corsica was the largest European territory to be ruled by Britain during the eighteenth century. The Anglo-Corsican Kingdom provides a unique insight into how Britain might rule conquered territories in Europe. The thesis charts and explains Britain's relations with Corsica against the background of the second hundred years war against France.

abstract: Profound alterations to instruments that take place over short periods of time are fascinating, and the changes undergone by the guitar during the late eighteenth century make for an intriguing transition in the instrument's history. The guitar that existed before 1750 is most commonly referred to as the 'Baroque guitar' and is vastly different from the guitar of today. It was considerably smaller than the guitars that followed, pitched higher, and used primarily for accompaniment through chord strumming. From roughly 1750 to 1800 the guitar underwent a transformation that eventually led to the design and performance practices that have continued through to this day; larger, with lower-pitched courses (and sometimes single stringing), and used increasingly more in punteado (plucked) style. By defining the instrument as it existed prior to 1750, and the changes that it underwent after 1750, we can ensure that the instrument discussed is the one that has directly led to the instrument we use today. Because instrument design and performance practice inevitably influence each other, a thorough examination of ornamentation practices from 1750-1800 can lead to a greater understanding of the instrument as it changed, and the instrument it eventually turned into. Since the early nineteenth century was one of the more productive time periods for the guitar, having a better understanding of the ornamentation performance practices that preceded it may provide insight to how the players and composers of this fertile time (Sor, Aguado, Giuliani, etc.) approached their instrument. Although there was not much music printed or copied for guitar during the latter half of the eighteenth century, a substantial number of guitars were built, along with instruction manuals featuring the guitar. Instruction manuals were examined, along with works for solo guitar and guitar in ensemble with other instruments, to explore ornamentation practices from 1750-1800. Through examination of the guitar instruction manuals of the late eighteenth century, an increased understanding is gained regarding the techniques that eventually became cornerstones of nineteenth-century guitar performance practice. / Dissertation/Thesis / D.M.A. Music 2012

This dissertation examines the role of the mob in Early American literature, and how the mob continues to be an essential part of American society. Chapter one uses Linebaugh's and Rediker's The Many-Headed Hydra to argue that early American authors acted as demagogues attempting to control the mob. These earliest American writers aligned with Federalist-leaning politicians and convey a conservative message to the reading public. For these American authors it was essential to keep the Revolutionary spirit alive, and to point the overeager mob in the direction of worthwhile causes. Just who is deciding whether a cause is a "moral" one or not is the subject of chapter two. Charles Brockden Brown's Wieland and "Trials of Arden," and Stephen Burroughs' Memoir reveal attempts by these authors to manipulate and force the reader to wrestle with "reasonable doubt." These authors frame the reader as the mob, and attempt to push the reader to think without "hasty judgment." Building on these ideas, the discussion moves to the "neutral ground" in The Spy, "My Kinsman, Major Molineux," "Rip Van Winkle," and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." The neutral ground, a liminal space, is the truest test of Democracy, as it is an area without formal laws and regulations. Mob rule dominates this region, and, though dangerous, it allows for the greatest freedom in the new nation. Chapter four argues that the hope of the "neutral ground" on the frontier is a myth. The sea-novels of Herman Melville, Richard Penn Smith's Col. Crockett, and political cartoons of the 1830s, reveal that corrupt captains are formed wherever Americans look for freedom, whether that be at sea or on the western frontier. The concluding chapter focuses on the current usage of "mob" in American culture--looking at the Tea Party and Occupy movements of the last decade--and asserts that mobs are currently alive and well in American literature and culture.

Scholars argue that Coetzee’s novels critique and disavow the origins and legacy of the novel tradition and its influence on the contemporary novel. They also claim that J.M. Coetzee’s novels herald in the demise of the contemporary novel. These interpretations are motivated by the political readings of postcolonialism and postmodernism. The premise of this dissertation is to depart from those postcolonial and postmodern approaches and offer close readings of Coetzee’s novels through the origins and legacy of the early eighteenth-and nineteenth century novel. My study argues that several of Coetzee’s novels allude to the intellectual, historical, and cultural legacies of the eighteenth-and nineteenth-century novel. I argue that the origin and rise of the English novel and its subgenres provide Coetzee with ideas to use in his own novels. These paradigms in Coetzee’s novels espouse —rather than renounce — the influence and tradition of the early novel, showing that its inspiration remains relevant in the contemporary novel. Thus, the general premise of this dissertation is that Coetzee does not necessarily “write back” to the canon and the origins of English novel, but rather he writes through and with those enduring forms and structures. This study shows that there are literary connections between the early beginnings of the novel and the contemporary novel that offer cogent examinations —examinations that find compromise between the past and present rarely made through postcolonial or postmodern approaches.

abstract: Arrangements of music from other instruments have always played a key role in expanding the guitar repertoire. This project investigates the life and work of eighteenth-century composer Antonio Soler (1729-1783), specifically his sonatas for solo keyboard. This study carries out a formal inquiry on Soler's influences, including a background of Soler's life and training, his connection with Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757), and an overview of the eighteenth-century sonata in Spain. Timbres, articulations, tessitura, and other aspects of Spanish folk music are discussed as related to Soler's composition style. Five sonatas are analyzed in connection to Spanish folk music, and part of this study's focus was arranging the sonatas for two guitars: R. 48, 50, 60, 106 and 114. An overview of the current arrangements of Soler's sonatas for guitar is included in Appendix A. / Dissertation/Thesis / D.M.A. Music 2014

The Grand Tour is known to scholars as a significant period of travel in which members of English society could immerse themselves in the foreign, while also adhering to established social customs. Scholarship previously regarded the Grand Tour as an intellectual journey for aristocratic Englishmen; however, an incorporation of women into this narrative has introduced many new and important themes that merit further study. Women’s increasing participation in the Grand Tour, which gained in popularity in the eighteenth century, reveals many unique aspects of British society in the period. The integration of women into the Tour is also an indication of increased mobility for an emerging class of Britons who sought amusement and distinction abroad. Cultural identity played an active role in not only shaping the traveler’s experience but also in dictating how travelers represented themselves on their journey. Traveler’s served as cultural intermediaries that represented their country while abroad and transported aspects of the foreign societies they encountered home with them. While cultural identity certainly shaped perceptions of travelers, this work endeavors to bring into focus additional points of analysis and emphasize emerging areas of study. The appropriation of foreign objects and the significance of their integration into domestic life and social practices, the pursuit of amusement and that pursuit’s influence on the Tour experience, and the essential role played by the body as another category of experience in travel are all areas of interest and focus in this additional interpretation of the Grand Tour.

No description available.

Friendship between the sexes, in eighteenth-century England, was a site of great controversy: it could be mocked as a chimera, feared as a mask for seduction or a leveller of gender distinctions, or welcomed as a sign of newly enlightened sociability. Sarah Fielding, Henry Fielding, Samuel Richardson and Charlotte Lennox all explored the tantalizing possibilities of such friendship in their daily lives as well as in their fiction. Their relationships have tended to be stereotyped as a symbiosis of benevolent male genius and grateful female talent. But as friends, siblings and colleagues who worked together closely, these writers broke new ground. In the middle of the century, a unique spirit of cooperation veiled, without erasing, the old tensions between the sexes, which continued to be played out discreetly in these writers' dedications, prefaces, reviews and, above all, letters. Mid--eighteenth-century experiments with the theme of friendship between the sexes in fiction have been generally ignored or misread as euphemistic versions of courtship or parenthood. But novels by the four authors in this study benefit greatly from being read against the grain, with the spotlight turned from their main plots of courtship to their more ambiguous sub-plots. Male-female friendship is not proposed here as a watertight category but rather as a fascinating area of overlap and contest between ideologies of relationship. Chapter 1 sketches the broad spectrum of male-female friendship possibilities in eighteenth-century literature. The next three chapters focus on three significant sample patterns: Sarah and Henry Fielding's sibling bond, Samuel Richardson's cultivation of a wide circle of literary 'daughters', and the mentor-protegee relationship in the life and works of Charlotte Lennox. The aim of this thesis is to reconsider these writers' lives and reputations while demonstrating the peculiar interest of male-female friendship as a lens through which to view eighteenth-century literature and literary history.

This thesis seeks to define how Francis Barrett’s The Magus, Or Celestial Intelligencer is indicative of a transitional period (1800–1830) of English Magic. The intention and transmission of Barrett’s The Magus is linked to the revival of occultism and its use as a textbook for occult philosophy. This thesis provides a historical background preceding this revival. The aim of the thesis is to establish Barrett’s text as a hybrid interpretation of Renaissance magic for a modern audience. It is primarily by this hybridization that a series of feedback loops would begin to create the foundation for modern occultism. This study utilizes a careful study of primary sources, including a systematic examination of The Magus within its intellectual and social contexts.

This dissertation examines the aesthetics of Adam Smith. It argues that, despite appearances to the contrary, Smith not only articulated ideas on the subject and was engaged in the aesthetic debates of his time, but that he in many ways innovates on and challenges received opinion—he thus differs significantly from some of his better known contemporaries, including Edmund Burke and David Hume. For this reason, he is not merely a major thinker who happened to dabble in aesthetics; on the contrary, he considered the subject, which appears in nearly all his works, important, and often interrogates its issues in a more studied way. My project thus makes a case for Smith as a significant thinker in the history of aesthetics, one who merits renewed attention. This study does so by investigating the major aesthetic issues of the day, which Smith in fact discusses. It begins by examining Smith’s remarks on taste—the aesthetic issue of the century—which occur largely in Theory of Moral Sentiments. Though seemingly tangential, his discussion of taste is significant as it argues against the predominant eighteenth-century current that maintained the existence of a standard. He also challenges theorists such as Hume who made aesthetic experience classless and, especially via sympathy, disinterested. The study next investigates Smith’s aesthetic normativity and what are for him valid aesthetic judgments, which can be reconciled with his remarks problematizing taste. Here too, Smith appears to argue against the predominant impulse that sought to ground valid aesthetic experience in the immediate; in doing so, Smith demystifies and democratizes aesthetic experience. Finally, the dissertation investigates tragedy, by far the literary genre that most interested Smith, and which also drew attention from better known theorists. The paradox of tragedy—why readers and spectators are attracted to painful representations—was an aesthetic issue that vexed many thinkers of the century, and although Smith appears to ignore the issue, we have in his moral theory a solution to the paradox, one that is unique and more satisfying than those of his contemporaries. The project concludes by examining Smith’s relation to neoclassical dramatic theory. Though superficially appearing complacent in uncritically adopting neoclassical doctrine, Smith, even here, is being original.