Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / The major purpose of the research in this thesis is to add to the available knowledge on advanced violin playing of the Romantic Period by, firstly, investigating the historical and technical knowledge and, secondly, adding some of my own findings. The project consists of a thesis, five recordings of live performances by the candidate and a guide to those performances. The development of violin techniques in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the role of the instrument in expressing the musical ideals of the age were chosen to study because there is a general lack of literature on the subject written by players who have performed the music chosen by the researcher. Furthermore, studies of this literature have left some important questions unanswered. One such question concerned how the development of the violin allowed musicians to better express the music in that era. Another question is what kinds of techniques were developed and how they related to the expression of the music. The thesis includes a study of the historical background of the Romantic period, as well as instrument development in this period. Analyses are made of the music considering techniques only where they are new techniques which considers the expressive reasons lying behind the new styles of writing. Treatises, violin methods, as well as modern studies are examined and compared in order to determine the development of violin techniques specifically in the period. This study is an investigation of both the written literature and the experiences of playing Romantic violin pieces in five concert situations, conducted over a time span of four years. The first concert presented a programme of German composer Robert Schumann’s Violin Sonata No. 1 in A minor Op. 105; with French composer Camille Saint-Saёns’ Havanaise Op. 83; and also Fritz Kreisler-‘Pugnani’s’ Praeludium und Allegro. The second concert presented a programme of Schubert’s Sonata in A major Op. 162 and Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 2 in D major Op. 94a. The third concert presented a programme of Brahms’ Sonata No. 3 in D minor Op. 108 with Tchaikovsky’s Three Pieces Op. 42. It also included Ravel’s Tzigane. The fourth concert programme presented Beethoven’s Piano Trio No. 1 in D major Op. 70, commonly called “The Ghost”. The fifth concert presented a programme of Brahms’ Sonata No. 1 in G major Op. 78 and also the Sonata No. 2 in A major Op. 100. In addition his Sonatensatz (Scherzo) in C minor was performed. For each of these concerts, the researcher made written reports detailing the reasons behind the choice of each piece, the place of the piece in the context of the research and an examination of the effectiveness of the concert recital programme. The reports included notes on the mastery of the different new violin techniques required to play the piece with an historic awareness. As evidence of this, each concert was recorded onto compact disc audio format. The reports were used as a basis for the accompanying Guide to Performance. This is a work of critical analysis and aims to give a record of the progress of the research through performance. It documents the gradual discovery of how the historical theory can be realised in practice and provides a rationale for the techniques and strategies adopted in the creative component. The appendices include lists of repertoire and composers of the period, a chart of significant events from the period relating to the violin, and a chart of some of the key genealogical relationships in violin pedagogy. The investigation of violin techniques of Romanticism produced a number of major results. One important finding suggests that there are solutions to the difficult technical passages, which require an understanding of the historical context and literary background. In summary, this research produced findings which are of significance to violin educators and advanced violin students.

Abstract This thesis is about the relationship between a body of nineteenth-century American literature and the science of thermodynamics that was emerging between the 1820s and 1870s, changing the way people thought about the physical universe and the possibilities and limitations that it presented for human action. Its basic premise is that thermodynamic energy, as it emerged in the nineteenth century as a quantifiable phenomenon, was not a self-revealing natural fact, but the “hybrid” product of a “cultural field” that included literature among other of its essential points of mediation. Through readings of works by Herman Melville, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Rebecca Harding Davis, Mark Twain, Robert Montgomery Bird and Thomas Josiah Dimsdale, it argues that literature throughout this period was very much occupied with questions and concerns that were reflected in the scientific and technological investigations that led to the creation of the laws of energy. Specifically, it argues that energy’s conservative and/or dissipative tendencies, which, besides representing objective descriptions of energetic behaviour, also reflected real possibilities and limitations for human action, were a major concern of writers at this time. Their work, it is argued, reveals humanly and historically meaningful aspects of what, in the laws of thermodynamics, would become ahistorical scientific facts, proving that literature and science, belonging to a greater “cultural field,” follow parallel lines of investigation indicative of larger cultural problematics.

This thesis undertakes an excursion into the network of science, art, and popular culture at the end of the 19th century to examine the interrelations between these various strands in relation to the emerging cinema and its so-called spiritual dimension. Instead of an ontology of the image, or a cultural (metaphorical) analysis of spirits, phantoms or spectres as immaterial manifestations, this thesis proposes an ontology of the spectators' perception through which the spiritual dimension, frequently associated with audio-visual media, should be sought within the perceptual processes of the mind. It takes the cinema spectators' experience into the centre of this investigation and argues for their active participation in and understanding of the cinema as philosophical dispositive from the very beginnings of its inception. It looks into the interconnections between the various constituencies that shaped the projecting image technologies and their reception at the time. In particular the context of a broader intellectual framework and concerns about time, movement, memory and consciousness, reveal a thickness and complexity especially in the interrelations of the oeuvres of Jules-Etienne Marey and Aby Warburg. Henri Bergson's system of thought, germane to these concerns, will be elaborated in detail and used to build an onto logical/anthropological model of the cinema spectator in order to suggest how the contradictory forces of the rational and the 'irrational' can help us understand the spiritual dimension of the emerging cinema. The cinema dispositifm this approach appears as a paradigm to exemplify the productivity of this nexus and provides a platform for further research into issues such as consciousness, precognition, intuition and psychic phenomena. The spectator in this anthropological/ontological discussion treated in a conceptual way and grounded in a historical context appears in a fuller dimensionality that allows us to accommodate the so-called spiritual dimension beyond the dichotomy of the material and immaterial, the body and the mind. This model of the cinema spectator that this thesis proposes can be defined as an embodied, immanent and above all actively participant agent, which can be extended into a wider discussion of the perception, uses and interpretations of technology.

My dissertation charts the transatlantic nineteenth-century novel's subtle revisions to the traditional marriage plot, in terms of both narrative and form, identifying a gradual shift in the way marriage was fictionalized. I argue that incremental revisions to the marriage plot reconstruct positive representations of female marital experience into negative depictions that transform marriage into a form of institutionalization that leads to psychological and bodily trauma. I reveal the development of a collective trauma narrative that underscores the nineteenth-century woman's experience living inside society's oppressive marital culture. The novel serves as the body of cultural work that both represents and shapes women's marital experiences inside a society that legally forced them to surrender their identity, person, and property to their husband, as well as socially holding them to a much higher standard of propriety and obedience. In specific chapters, I create transatlantic pairings that trace the novel's troubled efforts to free itself and its heroines from the constraints of the marriage plot which reflect women's inability to do so in real life.

This thesis examines the production and reception of French opera in New Orleans in the first half of the nineteenth century, through a focus on the city’s principal French-language theatre from 1819 to 1859, the Théâtre d’Orléans. Building on the small body of existing scholarship concerning the theatre’s history and repertoire, here I draw upon a greatly expanded range of sources—including court cases, sheet music, and novels—in order to understand more about the ways in which operatic culture shaped and was shaped by city life in this period. New Orleans’s operatic life relied on transatlantic networks of people and materials in order to thrive, and this thesis explores the city’s place within growing global operatic systems in the nineteenth century. The five chapters each reflect on different aspects of operatic translocation and its significance for New Orleans. The first two argue for the centrality of human agency to the development of transatlantic networks of production and performance by examining the management of the theatre and the international movement of singers in turn. Chapter 3 investigates the impact of French grand opéra on New Orleans, arguing that the genre provided a focus for the negotiation of local, national, and international identities among opposing critical (and linguistic) factions within the city, while also providing an impetus for the development of a material culture of opera. Chapter 4 explores opera-inspired composition in New Orleans through a focus on popular sheet music for the piano, in order to problematise our expectations of ‘local creativity’. Finally, Chapter 5 examines travel writing from both sides of the Atlantic in which the Théâtre d’Orléans features, arguing that the ‘idea’ of opera—including the imagined experience of Parisian opera-going— played an important role in articulating the authors’ perceptions of inter-cultural encounter in New Orleans. This thesis, therefore, seeks to unpick the processes involved in transatlantic opera from a number of angles. I resituate New Orleans, arguing that the city was not simply on the musical periphery, but that it was instead an integral part of an increasingly connected operatic world, which nonetheless sustained its own individual theatrical culture. This work, therefore, helps us both to challenge and expand ingrained ideas about French centralisation, North American cultural development, and cultural transfer up to the mid-nineteenth century.

This is a study of the gangs that inhabited Philadelphia and its neighboring districts in the mid-nineteenth century. In discussing the drastic societal shifts taking place in major American cities during this period--industrialization, immigration, urbanization, and the solidifying of class lines, this work paints a chaotic scene. Within this tumultuous setting, gangs emerged in working-class neighborhoods to meet two basic needs of their members and the communities they occupied. First, gang membership allowed working-class boys and men to establish shared identities. Utilizing a gender analysis, this study will demonstrate how working-class males developed a distinct version of masculinity. Set in defiance of middle-class values of self-control, wealth accumulation, and respect for the social hierarchy, this brand of masculinity embraced rowdiness, intemperance, and libertinism. Participation in activities such as assault, drinking, and battling rivals allowed gang members to assert their working-class manhood. Additionally, gang membership helped working-class boys and men carve out identities within their own neighborhoods. In the rapidly changing urban landscape, native-born whites, immigrants, and African Americans often lived alongside one another. By forming gangs along ethnic, religious, and political lines, these young men developed a sense of community and camaraderie in a sea of strangers. The second function mid-nineteenth century Philadelphia's gangs served was to empower their members and communities. Through violent attacks, gangs could establish a degree of control over which ethnic, racial, or religious groups lived and worked within their neighborhoods. Second, gangs empowered their members and communities politically. Recognizing their skill in using force, politicians in the mid-nineteenth century allied themselves with gangs in order to win elections. In return for their services, gang members received patronage positions and a degree of protection from the law. To Philadelphia's ruling elites, the poorer masses' increased participation in politics was unacceptable. In an effort to curb the influence of the city's and surrounding districts' gangs, reformers fought to establish a more effective system of law enforcement and to bureaucratize local government. As this thesis argues, the consolidation of Philadelphia and its neighboring districts in 1854 represents the traditional authorities' attempt to wrangle political power from the ward bosses of less affluent communities. / History

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / When the Shakers arrived in revolutionary America, colonists regarded them with suspicion and hostility. A century later, Americans viewed Shakers as models of agricultural excellence, morality, and healthy living. Although Shaker material culture has long been a subject of fascination for cultural historians, much of the scholarship has focused on Shaker furniture, crafts, and architecture. This dissertation examines the primacy of food in the establishment and growth of Shakerism. Drawing on relatively untapped Shaker sources, including newsletters and advertising collateral, as well as cookbooks, daily journals, and visitor accounts, it demonstrates how food provided the economic basis for their communities and established the Shaker reputation for excellence. Moreover, it underscores the importance of food in developing Americans' regard and respect for the Shakers, despite the sect's unusual lifestyle and unorthodox beliefs. [TRUNCATED]

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Yes / Despite the revival of interest in nineteenth century psychology and ethics in Britain during the 1980s, and the current debate around Utilitarian ethics in medicine (Buckle, 2005) and care (Offer, 2004), Utilitarian premises, understood as a psychological theory rather than as a moral philosophy, remain largely dormant in contemporary British Psychology. This is so despite their apparent survival in Behaviourism (Plaud & Vogeltanz, 1994). This article examines aspects of their decline within Victorian psychology, by focussing upon the relatively neglected psychological writings of Herbert Spencer. In doing so, it seeks to make a modest contribution to unravelling the complex changes in the nature of nineteenth-century psychology. In particular it is argued that, whilst some explanations of the decline of Utilitarian premises in the Victorian development of psychology focus upon the later part of the century and cultural or institutional factors, an examination of Spencer's works at the mid-century supports the view that changes were under way earlier. Whilst several explanations might be offered for this, changes in economic organisation and in the experience of individual agency are highlighted. The relation between Utilitarian psychology and Utilitarian ethics will then be considered. Finally, at this stage it should be possible to comment upon the significance of the marginalization of Utilitarian premises within the development of Victorian psychology for the contemporary debate about health resource allocation. / ESRC