The pamphleteers popularized the mythology of despotism by denouncing lettres de cachet and other supposed abuses of power that had little effect on most people. Historians like Funck-Brentano may be correct in arguing that the government was really moderate at this time, but it is important to show that radical propagandists were quite successful in convincing Frenchmen that thousands of innocent victims huddled miserably in <em >cachots for having inflamed the despotic passions of a minister. Moreover the prisons that were mythological for most Frenchmen had been terribly real for Brissot, Carra, Gorsas and many other writers, and this consideration also suggests the importance of the biographical approach. The Bastille may have been nearly empty, but it was a powerful symbol, effectively exploited by pamphleteers who dealt in symbols, declamation and distortions of political realities. They were highly successful in dominating public opinion, which exerted an influence on events that has been unappreciated in relation to the weak, irresolute rule of Louis XVI. The thesis attempts to develop this interprettion of the political importance of radical propaganda with reference to the scientific, financial and literary history of the period. It may seem weak on some ponts of these specialized fields, but it is hoped that it assimilates them successfully in its main attempt to contribute to an understanding of the last years of the Ancien Regime: its analysis of the character of radical propaganda in relation to the men who created it.

In this dissertation, I examine antagonistic relationships between women writers in the first half of the eighteenth century, focusing on the works of Delarivier Manley, Martha Fowke Sansom, Eliza Haywood, and Laetitia Pilkington. Professional rivalry among women writers represents an under-studied but vital element of the history of print culture in the early eighteenth century. I argue that the shared burden of negotiating the complicated literary marketplace did not, as critics have at times suggested, inspire women who wrote for print publication to feel for one another a sisterly benevolence. Rather, fine gradations in social class, questions of genre status and individual talent, and -- perhaps most importantly -- clashing literary ambitions spurred early eighteenth-century women writers into vicious rivalries recorded in print and driven by print culture. Women documented their literary battles in poems, in prefaces, and in autobiographical texts replete with self-justification and with attacks on former friends or disappointing patronesses. This dissertation recognizes rivalry as a crucial mode of interaction between eighteenth-century literary women and analyzes the ways in which these professional women writers labored to defend themselves not just against patriarchal pressures but against one another. In doing so, it contributes to the construction of a more complete literary history of the first half of the eighteenth century by exploring how early eighteenth-century women writers imagined their own professional lives, how they imagined the professional lives of other women, and how they therefore believed themselves influenced (or claimed themselves influenced) by the support or detraction of other women. The first two chapters of this dissertation focus on Delarivier Manley's career and writings, while the second two address the entangled writing lives of Eliza Haywood and Martha Fowke Sansom. The concluding chapter briefly examines Laetitia Pilkington's Memoirs. I investigate the way these women employed the practice of life-writing as a means of self-construction, self-promotion, and public appeal. / text

This dissertation studies the intersection of knowledge, culture, and power in contested coastal and estuarine space in eighteenth-century northeastern North America. It examines the interdependence of vernacular pilot knowledge and directed hydrographic survey, their integration into practices of warfare and governance, and roles in assimilating American space to metropolitan scientific and aesthetic discourses. It argues that the embodied skill and local knowledge of colonial and Aboriginal peoples served vital and underappreciated roles in Great Britain’s extension of overseas activity and interest, of maritime empire. It examines the maritimicity of empire: empire as adaptation to marine environments through which it conducted political influence and commercial endeavour. The materiality of maritime empire—its reliance on patterns of wind and current, on climate and weather, on local relations of sea to land, on proximity of spaces and resources to oceanic circuits—framed and delimited transnational flows of commerce and state power. This was especially so in coastal and riverine littoral spaces of northeastern North America. In this local Atlantic, pilot knowledge—and its systematization in marine cartography through hydrographic survey—adapted processes of empire to the materiality of the maritime, and especially to the littoral, environment. Eighteenth-century British state agents acting in northeastern North America—in Mi’kmaqi/Acadia/Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec, and New England—developed new means of adapting this knowledge to the tasks of maritime empire, creating potent tools with which to extend Britain’s imperial power and influence amphibiously in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. If the open Atlantic became a maritime highway in this period, traversed with increasing frequency and ease, inshore waters remained dangerous bypaths, subject to geographical and meteorological hazards that checked overseas commercial exchange and the military and administrative processes that constituted maritime empire. While patterns of oceanic circulation permitted extension of these activities globally in the early modern period, the complex interrelation of marine and terrestrial geography and climate in coastal and estuarine waters long set limits on maritime imperial activity. This dissertation examines the nature of these limits, and the means that eighteenth-century British commercial and imperial actors developed to overcome them.

When Hubert Le Blanc published his Défence de la basse de viole in 1741, the cello had already established itself as a solo instrument in Parisian musical life. Several cellists, both French and foreign, had performed to acclaim at the Concert Spirituel, and the instrument had a rapidly expanding repertoire of published solo sonatas by French composers. Among the most significant of the early French cellist-composers were Jean Barrière (1707-47), François Martin (c. 1727-c. 1757), Jean-Baptiste Masse (c. 1700-1757), and Martin Berteau (1708/9-1771). Their cello sonatas are innovative, experimental, often highly virtuosic, and, in spite of unashamedly Italianate traits, tinged with a uniquely French hue. Yet notwithstanding its repertoire and the skill of its performers, this generation of French cellist-composers has remained undervalued and underexplored. To a large extent, this neglect has arisen because a succeeding generation of French cellists of the late eighteenth century - the Duport brothers, Jean-Pierre (1741-1818) and Jean-Louis (1749-1819), the Janson brothers, Jean-Baptiste-Aimé (1742-1823) and Louis-Auguste-Joseph (1749-1815), and Jean-Baptiste Bréval (1753-1823) - are widely acknowledged as the creators of the modern school of cello playing. This dissertation focuses exclusively on the early French cello school. It seeks to examine the rise of the solo cello in France within its socio- cultural and historical context; to provide biographies of those com- prising the early French cello school; to explore the repertoire with particular emphasis on the growth of technique and idiom, detailing features that may be described as uniquely French, and to assert the importance of and gain recognition for this school, not as a forerunner of the so-called Duport school but as an entity in itself.

During the 1740’s, Hudson Bay went from an obscure backwater of the British Empire to a locus of colonial ambition. Arthur Dobbs revitalized Northwest Passage exploration, generating new information about the region’s environment and indigenous peoples. This study explores evolving English and British representations of Hudson Bay’s climate and landscape in travel and natural history writing, and probes British anxieties about foreign environments. I demonstrate how Dobbs’ ideology of improvement optimistically re-imagined the North, opening a new discursive space wherein the Subarctic could be favourably described and colonized. I examine how Hudson Bay explorers’ responses to difficulties in the Arctic and Subarctic were seen to embody, even amplify, central principles and features of eighteenth-century British culture and identity. Finally, I investigate how latitude served as a benchmark for civilization and savagery, subjugating the Lowland Cree and Inuit to British visions of settlement and improvement in their home territories.

Cette thèse porte sur les gestes et attitudes qui ont caractérisé la figure aristocratique dans l’art européen entre 1661 et 1789. Cet intervalle correspond à la durée de vie d’un paradigme corporel noble appelé « le bon air et la bonne grâce », de son élaboration à la cour de Louis XIV et de sa diffusion hégémonique en Europe, jusqu’à son rejet définitif à la Révolution française. La société d’Ancien Régime a déployé tout un arsenal de moyens (exercices, instruments orthopédiques,…) pour intérioriser une grâce qui devait paraître innée et prouver la noblesse. Le maître à danser détenait le monopole de l’inculcation de cette grâce et de son élaboration suivant des critères hautement esthétiques. Les gestes et positions inventoriés ici, sont décrits et associés à leurs connotations d’origine, montrant qu’une connaissance approfondie et minutieuse de la gestuelle peut affiner notre compréhension d’un large pan de l’art des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. L’auteur démontre que cette hexis corporelle contemporaine transcende tous les domaines concernés par le corps noble (éducation, théâtre, danse, opéra, arts martiaux, etc.) et en vient à infiltrer la majorité des genres picturaux, bousculant les traditions artistiques déjà en place et s’affichant comme une alternative moderne à la grâce des Anciens. Le portrait, la gravure de mode, les figurines de porcelaine, les vues de villes et de jardins sont les plus touchés par ce phénomène. La bonne grâce s’affirme ainsi dans une culture visuelle qui, par ricochet, en vient à renforcer les pratiques sociales dont elle était le reflet. Cet aller-retour des attitudes aristocratiques entre l’art et la vie occasionne la standardisation de la figure et du corps aristocratiques. Dans la pastorale, la peinture d’histoire et la scène de genre, l’idéal aristocratique se manifeste, tantôt en négatif dans la figure du paysan, du Pierrot et de l’Arlequin, tantôt de manière idéalisée dans celles du berger et du héros galants. La substitution de gestes emphatiques et d’expressions faciales explicites par une gestuelle fondée sur la retenue et la dissimulation des passions, fondera une nouvelle historia moins lisible que la traditionnelle, mais plus subtile et insinuée, répondant ainsi mieux au goût et à la sensibilité aristocratique. / This thesis concerns the characteristic gestures and attitudes of the aristocratic figure in European art between 1661 and 1789. This period corresponds to the lifetime of a noble bodily ideal named “le bon air” and “la bonne grâce”, from its formulation at Louis XIV’s court and hegemonic propagation until its decline with the French Revolution. A panoply of means (exercises, orthopaedic instruments…) have been invented by the Ancien Régime society to embody a grace that should appear inborn and testify to noble birth. The dancing-master enjoyed the monopoly of inculcating this grace and elaborating it in accordance with highly aesthetic criteria. Most of the bon air and bonne grâce gestures and postures are here catalogued, described and associated with their original connotative values, showing that a deep and meticulous knowledge of body techniques can sharpen our understanding of a great proportion of Early Modern artworks. The author agues that this bodily habitus transcended every field concerned with the noble body (education, theatre, dance, opera, martial arts…) and came to infiltrate most pictorial genres, challenging age-old artistic traditions and imposing itself as a modern alternative to the grace of the Ancients. Portraiture, fashion plates, porcelain figurines, city and garden landscapes were the most affected by this phenomenon. Bonne grâce thus affirmed itself in a visual culture, which in return reinforced the very social practices that mirrored. The circular migration of aristocratic gestures between life and art caused a standardisation of both aristocratic body and figure. Within pastoral, history painting and genre scenes, the aristocratic ideal reveals itself antithetically in the figure of the peasant, the Pierrot and the Harlequin, and idealistically in those of the gallant shepherd and gallant hero. The substitution of emphatic gestures and strong facial expressions for ones based on restraint and dissimulation gave birth to a new historia that was less legible, but more subtle and suggestive, in accordance with aristocratic taste and sensibility.

«Building Blocks: Children’s Literature and the Formation of a Nation, 1750-1825» examine la façon dont la littérature pour enfants imprègne les jeunes lecteurs avec un sens de nationalisme et d'identité nationale à travers la compréhension des espaces et des relations spatiales. La thèse étudie les œuvres d’enfants par Thomas Day, Sarah Fielding, Mary Wollstonecraft, Richard Lovell et Maria Edgeworth, Charles et Mary Lamb, Sarah Trimmer, Lucy Peacock, Priscilla Wakefield, John Aikin, et Anna Laetitia Barbauld. Les différents sujets thématiques reflètent la façon dont les frontières entre les dimensions extérieures et intérieures, entre le monde physique et le domaine psychologique, sont floues. En s'appuyant sur les travaux de penseurs éducatifs, John Locke et Jean-Jacques Rousseau, les écritures pour les enfants soulignent l'importance des expériences sensorielles qui informent l’évolution interne des individus. En retour, la projection de l'imagination et l'investissement des sentiments aident à former la manière dont les gens interagissent avec le monde matériel et les uns envers les autres afin de former une nation. En utilisant une approche Foucaldienne, cette thèse montre comment la discipline est inculquée chez les enfants et les transforme en sujets réglementés. Grâce à des confessions et des discours, les enfants souscrivent à la notion de surveillance et de transparence tandis que l'appréciation de l'opinion publique encourage la pratique de la maîtrise de soi. Les enfants deviennent non seulement des ébauches, sensibles à des impressions, mais des corps d'écriture lisibles. Les valeurs et les normes de la société sont internalisées pendant que les enfants deviennent une partie intégrale du système qu'ils adoptent. L'importance de la visibilité est également soulignée dans la popularité du système de Linné qui met l'accent sur l'observation et la catégorisation. L'histoire naturelle dans la littérature enfantine renforce la structure hiérarchique de la société, ce qui souligne la nécessité de respecter les limites de classes et de jouer des rôles individuels pour le bien-être de la collectivité. Les connotations religieuses dans l'histoire naturelle peuvent sembler justifier l'inégalité des classes, mais elles diffusent aussi des messages de charité, de bienveillance et d'empathie, offrant une alternative ou une forme d’identité nationale «féminine» qui est en contraste avec le militarisme et le nationalisme patricien. La seconde moitié de la thèse examine comment la théorie des « communautés imaginées » de Benedict Anderson devient une possibilité à travers le développement du goût national et une compréhension de l'interconnexion entre les individus. Le personnage du barde pointe à la centralité de l'esprit communautaire dans l'identité nationale. Parallèlement à la commercialisation croissante de produits culturels et nationaux durant cette période, on retrouve l’augmentation de l’attachement affectif envers les objets et la nécessité de découvrir l'authentique dans la pratique de la réflexion critique. La propriété est redéfinie à travers la question des «vrais» droits de propriété et devient partagée dans l'imaginaire commun. Des cartes disséquées enseignent aux enfants comment visualiser des espaces et des frontières et conceptualisent la place de l’individu dans la société. Les enfants apprennent que des actions disparates effectuées dans la sphère domestique ont des répercussions plus importantes dans le domaine public de la nation. / “Building Blocks: Children’s Literature and the Formation of a Nation, 1750-1825” examines how children’s literature imbues young readers with a sense of nationalism and national identity through the understanding of spaces and spatial relationships. The thesis studies various children’s works by Thomas Day, Sarah Fielding, Mary Wollstonecraft, Richard Lovell and Maria Edgeworth, Charles and Mary Lamb, Sarah Trimmer, Lucy Peacock, Priscilla Wakefield, John Aikin, and Anna Laetitia Barbauld. The various thematic subjects utilised reflect how boundaries between the exterior and interior dimensions, between the physical world and the psychological realm, are blurred. Drawing from the works of educational thinkers, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, writings for children highlight the importance of sensory experiences, which inform the internal developments of individuals. In return, the projection of imagination and the investment of feelings help shape the way people interact with the material world and with one another to form a nation. Using a Foucauldian approach, this thesis shows how discipline is instilled in children, turning them into regulated subjects. Through confessions and discourse, children subscribe to the notion of surveillance and transparency while an appreciation of public opinion further encourages the practice of self-control. Children become not only blank slates, susceptible to impressions, but readable bodies of writing. The values and norms of society are internalised, as children become part of the system that they adopt. The significance of visibility is also underscored in the popularity of the Linnaean system, which emphasises close observation and categorisation. Natural history in children’s literature reinforces the hierarchical structure of society, underscoring the need to respect class boundaries and perform individual roles for the wellbeing of the collective. The religious connotations in natural history may seem to justify class inequality; however, they also disseminate messages of charity, benevolence, and empathy, offering an alternative or “feminine” form of national identity that stands in contrast with militarism and patricianism. The second half of the thesis looks at how Benedict Anderson’s “imagined communities” becomes a possibility through the development of national taste and an understanding of the interconnection between individuals. The figure of the bard points to the centrality of communal spirit in national identity. Alongside the growing commercialisation of cultural and national products in the period were increasing emotional attachments to objects and the necessity in discovering the authentic in the practise of critical reflection. Property is redefined in the question of “true” ownership and becomes shared in the communal imagination. Dissected maps teach children how to visualise spaces and boundaries and conceptualise one’s place within society. Children learn that disparate actions performed in the domestic sphere have larger implications in the public realm of the nation.

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In much of the historiography surrounding print culture and the book trade, the worldliness of print remains a point of common emphasis. Indeed, many influential studies either assume or actively present the history of print as part of a broader ‘secularization thesis’. Recently, however, historians have challenged these narratives, recognizing the central role of religious print as a driver of growth within the book trade and discussion within the nascent ‘public sphere’. Yet the scholarship into ‘religion and the book’ remains fragmentary, focused on individual genres or persons, with no unified monograph or standard reference work yet to emerge. This dissertation addresses some of the barriers to synopsis by investigating the long-term print output of the largest social and professional group engaged in evangelizing Christianity to the public: the clergy of the Church of England. By focusing on the clergy, this dissertation evades the usual narrow focus on genre. In the past, book-historical and bibliographic studies have relied heavily on a priori classification schemes to study the market for print. While sufficient in the context of relatively well-defined genre categories, such as printed sermons, the validity of these classification schemes breaks down at the wider level, for example, under the conceptual burden of defining the highly fluid and wide-ranging category of ‘religious works’. This dissertation begins to remedy such problems by modelling the print output of a large population of authors who had the strongest stake in evangelizing Christianity to the public through print. It utilizes the latest techniques in the field of digital humanities and bibliometrics to create a representative sample of the print output of the Anglican clergy over the ‘long’ eighteenth-century (here 1660-1800). Based on statistical trends, the thesis identifies a crucial period in the history of clerical print culture, the first four decades of the Hanoverian regime. The period is explored in detail through three subsequent case studies. By combining both traditional and digital methods, therefore, the dissertation explores clerical publishing as a phenomenon subject to evolution and change at both the macro and micro level. The first chapter provides an overarching statistical study of clerical publishing between 1660 and 1800. By combining data from two bibliographical datasets, The English Short-Title Catalogue (ESTC), and the prosopographical resource, The Clergy of the Church of England Database (CCED), I extract and analyse a dataset of clerical works consisting of almost 35,000 bibliographic records. The remaining chapters approach the thesis topic through primary research-based case studies using both print and manuscript sources. The case studies were selected from the period identified in the preceding statistical analysis as a crucial transitional moment in the history of clerical publishing culture, c.1714 to 1750. These case studies form chapters 2, 3, and 4, each of which explore a different aspect of a network of authors who worked under the direction of the bishop of London, Edmund Gibson (1723-1748), during the era of Whig hegemony under Sir Robert Walpole. Finally, an appendix outlines the methodology used in chapter 1 to extract the sample of clerical printed works from the ESTC. Overall, the thesis demonstrates the profound influence of the clergy on the development of English print in the hand-press period. It thus forms both a historiographic intervention against the secularization thesis still implicit in discussions of print culture and the book trade, as well as providing a cautionary critique of the revisionism which has shaped recent investigations into the Church of England.

This thesis explores the reception of Johann Joachim Winckelmann in Italian art scholarship, 1755-1834. Winckelmann posed a problem: he was a presence in Italy that could not be ignored, yet the views he expounded were Italophobic and contentious to an Italian readership. In light of this dilemma, the research question asked is how did Italian art scholarship respond to Winckelmann in this period and why did it respond in that way. The core argument advanced is that there were two opposing reactions to Winckelmann, both of which were motivated by nationalism. On the one hand, Italian art scholars presented Winckelmann, his works, and his views as less attractive to an Italian readership than they would otherwise have appeared and, on the other hand, they presented him as more attractive. Through these reactions – termed foreignization and domestication respectively – art scholarship either defended against and ostracized Winckelmann or, when presented as less offensive, welcomed and embraced him amongst Italians. Thus this thesis argues that both reactions demonstrate a nationalistic attempt to portray Winckelmann in the manner most auspicious to the yet-to-be-united peninsula. In order to explore this response to the German scholar, the thesis centres on three media: translations, art literature, and artistic journalism. Both foreignization and domestication are evident throughout the sources analysed, yet there is a predominance of domestication, achieved through a variety of methods. This investigation adds to existing literature by examining the previously overlooked dilemma that Winckelmann posed. Moreover, employing the original conceptual framework of foreignization and domestication allows for a re-evaluation of how the art scholarship of the period engaged with the German scholar. Finally, demonstrating the infiltration of nationalistic sentiment in this period, even extending to Italian art scholarship, this thesis is the first to posit that nationalism played a significant role in Winckelmann's critical legacy.