San\u27yō, Bakin, and the Reanimation of Japan\u27s Past

ハワイ州マウイ, 2000年11

Lost-and-found Photos: Practices and Perceptions

Personal photographs become separated from their original owners in a number of ways, due to time or tragedy, sometimes ending up in strangers’ hands. Dealers, collectors, curators, bloggers, scholars, and families actively seek what are frequently called “orphaned,” “abandoned,” or “found” photos and present them to the public in multiple formats. This dissertation offers an analysis of the practices and perceptions that surround these presentations, and it argues for use of a more inclusive term (“lost-and-found”) to describe personal photos that are connected to both finders and losers. Data were collected in three primary ways: (1) examination of the current contexts in which “lost” photos appear (e.g. books, websites, newspapers), (2) interviews with collectors of “lost” photos, and (3) the project’s website, designed to collect anecdotes from those affected by “lost” photos. Dominating this field of study are the perspectives of those who find personal photographs. The choices photo-finders make regarding the presentation and interpretation of photographs differ in clear ways, enabling me to group their practices within five categories which are evident across all formats examined in this study: Museum Curator, Archivist/Preservationist, Essayist/Editor, Reuniter, and Dealer. What unites practitioners across these discrete categories is the act of compiling and displaying “lost” photos within public archives, where new presentations of old photos invite myriad interpretations, conversations, and possibilities. Since the perspectives of those who have lost personal photographs have been largely missing from this field of study, I created tools to capture the viewpoints of photo “losers.” The project’s website, Lostandfoundphotos.org, provided a space in which contributors shared stories of personal photos they had lost, challenging notions of finder-collectors who often see themselves as the sole appreciators of “lost” photos’ true value. Most importantly, this project gave a literal voice to photo-losers through an audio component—a voicemail system which recorded contributors’ stories of lost personal photographs. This aural element offers a new medium for the examination of the visual, and it provides an emotional depth which, it is hoped, may inspire an enlargement of lost-and-found photography practices to accommodate the perspectives of both finders and losers

Fairground Attractions

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. The study investigates the cultural production of the visual iconography of popular pleasure grounds from the eighteenth century pleasure garden to the contemporary theme park. Deborah Philips identifies the literary genres, including fairy tale, gothic horror, Egyptiana and the Western which are common to carnival sites, tracing their historical transition across a range of media to become familiar icons of popular culture.Though the bricolage of narratives and imagery found in the contemporary leisure zone has been read by many as emblematic of postmodern culture, the author argues that the clash of genres and stories is less a consequence of postmodern pastiche than it is the result of a history and popular tradition of conventionalised iconography

Fairground Attractions

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. The study investigates the cultural production of the visual iconography of popular pleasure grounds from the eighteenth century pleasure garden to the contemporary theme park. Deborah Philips identifies the literary genres, including fairy tale, gothic horror, Egyptiana and the Western which are common to carnival sites, tracing their historical transition across a range of media to become familiar icons of popular culture.Though the bricolage of narratives and imagery found in the contemporary leisure zone has been read by many as emblematic of postmodern culture, the author argues that the clash of genres and stories is less a consequence of postmodern pastiche than it is the result of a history and popular tradition of conventionalised iconography

Strata, Soma, Psyche: Narrative and the Imagination in the Nineteenth-Century Science of Lyell, Darwin, and Freud

My dissertation, “Strata, Soma, Psyche: Narrative and the Imagination in the Nineteenth-Century Science of Lyell, Darwin, and Freud,” contributes new research to the diverse field mapping the intersections of science and literature in the nineteenth century. Although scholars such as Gillian Beer and George Levine have established ties between developments in the natural sciences and the scope of the nineteenth-century novel, there has not been a sustained effort to attend to the narrative structures of the primary texts that most influenced coterminous literary movements of the period. My work thus attends closely to the narrative and imaginative form of scientific writing that attempts to transcend the limits of what can be seen. All three of Charles Lyell’s, Charles Darwin’s, and Sigmund Freud’s discipline-making texts (The Principles of Geology, The Origin of Species, and The Interpretation of Dreams) deal with historical forces whose operations cannot be observed in action, but only through the traces that are left behind. Three long single-author chapters detail how each text reconciles the ambition to establish a new branch of empirical science with the necessity of relying on the imagination to ford the gaps in physical evidence. I provide close readings of these foundational texts, identifying in each the rhetorical systems by which it represents and details what has never been present, and I demonstrate how each author strategically employs methods more conventionally associated with fictional narratives in the pursuit of establishing scientific facts. As a result, my project reframes the dominant concerns of Nineteenth-Century Literature and Science Studies by focusing in on how literary point of view, diversely defined, enables scientific thought to find a language in which to speak

Rememory

Rememory, coined in Toni Morrison’s 1987 novel Beloved, refers to the psychological action of placing forgotten or misplaced memories into a narrated context within the self. Rather than directly “remembering,” the characters in Morrison’s novel, like their author, rely on a web of socially produced or shared memories as a way to understand their past. This essay catalogs an on-going performance of rememory in my photographic work. Through an interrogation of physical archives, I remap the historic presences of Black life in New England. This research based practice takes me to the preserved homes and to the workplaces of my real ancestors and fictive kin: African, European, and Indigenous peoples who collided in the port towns of Rhode Island and Massachusetts. I search for and “inhabit” house museums that claim a Black history as a way to challenge the imperatives of traditional preservation. Regionally these specific preservationist traditions shroud and stage a space to contemplate the complex forms of violence constituted in colonial America. Using still photography, sound design, and language, I transform the preserved house and the landscape of the region into zones where Blackness, and the rememory of slavery, is central to acquisition of historical knowledge. In each of these zones, I engage a practice of slow looking and listening mediated through the large format camera. In this essay, I think through my photographs as they facilitate the sensorial action of rememory. In addition to Morrison, I explore shared theoretical frames between W.E.B. Du Bois, Michel Rolph Trouillot, Hortense J. Spillers, and Saidiya Hartman to situate my work within an ongoing dialogue of how Blackness functions in and outside of historical narrative

The satirical reception of the new learning in english literature, 1592-1743

[EN] This PhD thesis is concerned with the satirical reception of the New Learning between 1592 and 1743. By the New Learning I mean antiquarianism, natural philosophy and textual criticism. The earliest example I have found of the satirical reception of antiquarianism is Thomas Nashe’s Pierce Penilesse his Supplication to the Devil (1592); the final work I look at in connection with textual criticism is Alexander Pope’s The Dunciad in Four Books (1743). In each of the three different fields something new began to happen in the period in question. The antiquaries, or later, antiquarians took an interest in the physical remnants of the past in order to understand better what had gone before. The natural philosophers, encouraged by Bacon’s scientific writings, embraced the empirical model of investigation and rejected Aristotle (384-322 BC) as stultifying and unproductive. The textual critics brought their faith in their own ability to correct faulty literary texts before a general readership, firstly in classical literature and secondly in Shakespeare. All three undertakings were contrary to the prevailing understanding of knowledge during the period, which was that knowledge came from texts and in particular from ancient classical literature. As a result of this, the antiquary, the virtuoso and the textual critic all attracted the attention of the satirists of the day, who remained loyal to the old ways of understanding. The thesis takes as its starting point Pedro Javier Pardo’s assertion that there is an identifiable body of work concerned with satirizing pedantry in the eighteenth century (Satire). He identifies the figures of what I call the textual critic and the virtuoso among others as the vehicles for this satire, regarding the Memoirs of Scriblerus (1741) as the epitome of the genre or mode. I have taken this perception back to the late 1590s by including the figure of the antiquary as another example of what is effectively a new form of learning which sought to displace the dominance of thinkers such as Aristotle and Galen (129-216 AD). By the sixteenth century, important contemporary thinkers were finding Aristotle’s thought restrictive. The logical framework of the Ancients’ way of looking at the world was provided by Aristotle’s Organon (4th century BC), six treatises on logic, including the Posterior Analytics, which explored how to define truth and what could be said about it. It is noteworthy in his Posterior Analytics that he specifies conclusions must be deducible from first principles in a scientific demonstration, surely meaning that the first principles determine the outcome of the experiment (Oxford Classical Dictionary 165-9). Aristotle regarded the syllogism as central to logic, a sequence of three statements the first two of which result in the third.1 While the syllogism served philosophers, it also potentially restricted them, as Bacon thought, because of its inclusive structure. This could result in the so-called syllogism fallacy. The epistemological rupture which precipitated the development of natural philosophy in the seventeenth century along experimental lines is to be found, as has already been implied, in the work of Francis Bacon (1561-1626). Bacon wrote a Novum Organon Scientiarum (1620), the purpose of which is clear in the title given to a mid-nineteenthcentury translation: The Novum Organon: Or, a True Guide to the Interpretation of Nature. He argues that the old ways of thinking excluded man from nature, rather than allowing him access to it and the ability to understand it. He also regarded the syllogism as suspect, as it made use of words which in turn represented confused notions (Instauratio II 69). His solution was to prefer the technique of induction to the syllogism, based on observation and conclusions drawn from what has been observed.4 Bacon’s philosophy gathered its own followers and was arguably the first instance of Modern thinking. It was partly as a result of Bacon’s writings that the Royal Society was founded in the 1660s, providing an institutional home for experimental science. The reaction on the part of the poets and the wits of the day to the experiments which were carried out there was one of incomprehension. This was because they were still comfortable with the Aristotelian status quo ante. It was this that led to the phenomenon of the satirical reception of natural philosophy. Early in the thesis I will show how the works of Bacon were important for this new development. I shall present in this thesis the idea that the satirical reception of the New Learning in English literature between 1592 and 1743 represents, on the one hand, a satirical response to three new disciplines – antiquarianism, natural philosophy and textual criticism – and, on the other, a record of a literary misapprehension. This was satire written according to an old way of thinking which was soon to give way to the new one which informed the satirical targets. Such satire preserves beliefs which are by now outdated and offers the historical lesson that he who mocks can, after the passing of a suitable amount of time, actually turn out to have mistakenly condemned a new form of knowledge because it was incompatible with the prevailing ideas of the day. There now follows a description of the structure of the thesis and a summary of its ten chapters. The thesis is divided into three parts which deal respectively with the figures of the antiquary, the virtuoso and the textual critic. Since the greater part of the evidence concerns the virtuoso, that part contains seven chapters, while the other two contain one and two chapters respectively. Chapter One is concerned with the satirical reception of the antiquary between 1592 and 1699. It begins with a discussion of the work of William Camden which highlights what is new about antiquarianism and collects together the various examples of satirical references to the antiquary. The first is Thomas Nashe’s Pierce Penilesse his Supplication to the Devil (1592) and the chapter ends with an examination of William King’s A Journey to London, In the Year 1698 (1699). Important works of literature discussed in this chapter are John Earle’s character sketch The Antiquarie, published in 1628, and Shackerley Marmion’s comedy of the same name, performed earlier but first printed in 1641. Chapter Two opens the second part of this thesis and gives an insight into the historical background to the figure of the virtuoso, an understanding of which is necessary to appreciate both the virtuoso and the satire written about the virtuoso. The chapter addresses the nature of natural philosophy as opposed to modern conceptions of science. It also explores the changing worldview of the 1600s, represented by Copernicus (1473-1543) and Kepler (1571-1630) in astronomy or Newton (1643-1727) in mathematics, and it stresses the importance of Francis Bacon’s work in allowing scientific inquiry to detach itself from the thinking of Aristotle and move ahead by embracing induction. It also discusses the different types of virtuosi and the ideas associated with them. It then explores the revaluation of the virtuosi in the twentieth century. Chapter Three examines the first satirical accounts of the virtuosi in the works of the author Samuel Butler. Although much of what Butler wrote about the virtuosi was not published until long after his death in 1759, he does provide us with the first example of the satirical reception of the virtuosi in the second part of Hudibras, where he satirizes the microscope (1663). His most accomplished satire on the virtuosi is probably The Elephant in the Moon, a work which attacks the use of the telescope to observe distant worlds supposedly teeming with life, according to the latest astronomical theories (probably 1676). Chapter Four concerns Thomas Shadwell (c. 1640-92). It was the character of Sir Nicholas Gimcrack in Shadwell’s comedy The Virtuoso (1676), which proved the most effective literary creation in undermining belief in the virtuosi. Chapter Five contains an examination of subsequent satirical accounts of the virtuoso by Sir Thomas Browne (1605-82), Aphra Behn (1640?-89) and William King (1663-1712) in works published from the 1680s onwards. In Browne’s Musaeum Clausum, or Biblioteca Abscondita (1683) we encounter a satirical reception of curiosity as a characteristic of the virtuoso. The first performance of Behn’s comedy The Emperor of the Moon took place in 1687. The central character of Behn’s comedy is Doctor Baliardo, who is obsessed with the moon. Behn’s characterization of Baliardo is Quixotic as his obsession with the moon comes from reading books on the subject and the results show the comic consequences of becoming detached from the world. The source of several references to Rosicrucianism is examined. The chapter closes with a consideration of two works by William King. These are The Transactioneer (1700) and the Useful Transactions in Philosophy, and Other Sorts of Learning: In Three Parts (1708). Chapter Six is concerned with Scriblerian satire by Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope. In the first part of the chapter the focus is on the Scriblerus Club, whose members included Swift and Pope. In the second half of the chapter the Memoirs of Scriblerus (1741) become the focus. A summary of the contents of the Memoirs is given and the satirical character of the Memoirs described. There ensues a discussion of the different satirical styles the Memoirs draw on, ranging from satire, parody and burlesque, the latter both in the eighteenth-century and in the modern sense. The importance of Cervantes for the Memoirs is described. There then follows a discussion of the satirical reception of the Ancients and Moderns in the Memoirs. Chapter Seven looks at satires written about Dr John Woodward (1665/8-1728), much of which was personal in nature. Woodward’s interests were rather broad and included fossils, antiquarianism and the treatment of smallpox. Each of these interests were the subject of satirical treatments of Woodward. A version of Woodward as a virtuoso appears in John Gay’s comedy Three Hours after Marriage (1717) in the form of the character Fossile. Woodward’s iron shield, which he thought was Roman in origin, features in the satire on antiquarianism in Chapter Three of the Memoirs of Scriblerus. The Life and Adventures of Don Bilioso d l’Estomac (1719) is an anonymous response to Woodward’s approach to treating smallpox. Chapter Eight seeks to answer the question as to whether Swift’s Voyage to Laputa is a Scriblerian postscript. There follows at the heart of this chapter a discussion of the visit to the Academy of Lagado in the Travels, when Gulliver visits the flying island of Laputa and its dependent territory of Balnibarbi. The conclusion is that the visit to the Academy of Lagado in Balnibarbi is an example of the satirical reception of early modern science. And given that much of Swift’s work considered in this chapter deals with follies in learning, the conclusion is reached that Gulliver’s Travels (1726) can hold its place in any account of the evolution of the satirical reception of early modern science and of learning itself. Part Three of this thesis deals with the satirical reception of the textual critic. Textual criticism became a subject for satire as a result of the publication of three books. Firstly, the edition of the poetry of the Roman poet Horace prepared by Richard Bentley was published in 1711 and soon became the focus of criticism because of Bentley’s changes to the text of one of the main works of Roman literature. Lewis Theobald, a self-confessed disciple of Bentley, published his Shakespeare Restored in 1726. The purpose of the work was to demonstrate through the procedures of textual criticism the defects of a recent edition of William Shakespeare’s plays edited by Alexander Pope. Thirdly, Bentley’s edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost was published in 1732 and flowed into the satirical current formed by Pope’s Dunciads (1729, 1743). Chapter Nine explores the development of textual criticism in the world of classical scholarship. It then examines Bentley’s intervention in the Battle of the Ancients and Moderns and his appearance as a character in Swift’s Battle of the Books (1704). The next topic is the importance given to the conjectural emendation in Bentley’s edition of Horace. The satirical responses to Bentley’s work are considered. Chapter Ten is concerned with Alexander Pope’s reception of textual criticism in his Dunciads (1729, 1743). Textual criticism was seen by Pope as another misguided Modern critical practice and as such fair game for satirical treatment. The importance of the publication of Lewis Theobald’s Shakespeare Restored (1726) is stressed for the writing of Pope’s The Dunciad Variorum (1729). The chapter mentions that the fictitious author of the editorial apparatus of this work is Martinus Scriblerus, already familiar from the Memoirs of Scriblerus. The change in hero to the actor and writer Colley Cibber (1671-1757) for Pope’s later The Dunciad in Four Books (1743) is discussed. A description of the life and work of Pope is also provided, which is necessary because the one informs the other. This is followed by a section on Pope’s first target as a textual critic, Lewis Theobald. The latter’s ideas about the editor’s responsibilities and his suitability for the role of textual critic are discussed. Several examples of his emendations to Pope’s edition are presented and discussed, along with an examination of the portrayal of Lewis Theobald in The Dunciad Variorum (1729). The satirical reception of Richard Bentley in The Dunciad in Four Books (1743) is examined, followed by an analysis of the paratext in the work of the Scriblerians and of the notes of Martinus Scriblerus in The Dunciad Variorum (1729). Finally, there is a brief examination of later works by writers other than Pope which were inspired by the figure of Martinus Scriblerus. In assembling the evidence for this thesis, I was largely guided by the search for literature about the virtuoso. Once the innovation of the virtuosi at the Royal Society became apparent, the choice of the antiquary and the textual critic as companions in the New Learning followed easily enough. The formal diversity used by the satirists to express their opposition is fascinating from a literary critical point of view. The matter is clear, construing the manner now follows.editor’s responsibilities and his suitability for the role of textual critic are discussed. Several examples of his emendations to Pope’s edition are presented and discussed, along with an examination of the portrayal of Lewis Theobald in The Dunciad Variorum (1729). The satirical reception of Richard Bentley in The Dunciad in Four Books (1743) is examined, followed by an analysis of the paratext in the work of the Scriblerians and of the notes of Martinus Scriblerus in The Dunciad Variorum (1729). Finally, there is a brief examination of later works by writers other than Pope which were inspired by the figure of Martinus Scriblerus. In assembling the evidence for this thesis, I was largely guided by the search for literature about the virtuoso. Once the innovation of the virtuosi at the Royal Society became apparent, the choice of the antiquary and the textual critic as companions in the New Learning followed easily enough. The formal diversity used by the satirists to express their opposition is fascinating from a literary critical point of view. The matter is clear, construing the manner now follows

Crossing the threshold of death: James Merrill's exploration in the form of his poetry

Boston University. University Professors Program Senior theses

"Is it time we move through or space?": literary anachronism and anachorism in the novels of Elizabeth Taylor

This thesis examines Elizabeth Taylor’s twelve novels through the lens of the interlinked concepts, anachronism and anachorism, an approach that enables an analysis of the structural, thematic and stylistic engagements with time and place in her fiction. Blending theme with chronology, the study attaches a particular topic to each decade between the 1940s and the 1970s: war and its aftermath are considered in Taylor’s 1940s novels; the servant-figure in those of the 1950s; feminine constructs in the 1960s; and death and dying in the 1970s. The study argues that while Taylor’s texts look back to previous literary periods and, increasingly, to earlier parts of the century, they simultaneously speak to their particular historical moment. The thesis contributes to recent scholarship that has sought to reappraise the fiction of neglected mid-twentieth-century writers, uncovering an altogether more innovative and complex fictive form than previously recognised. Taylor’s oeuvre is positioned firmly within this more nuanced and complicated literary landscape. Anachronism and anachorism frame and shape an analysis of those aspects within the structure and content of Taylor’s novels that are unexpected, out of place even, within the genre of domestic fiction. To facilitate the analysis, the study introduces the metaphor of ‘the scalpel within the kid glove’, which points both to the way Taylor writes and to a way of reading her. The distinct contribution the thesis makes to current scholarship is to demonstrate that Taylor’s novels are altogether more strange, more angry, more political and more philosophical than generally acknowledged. They destabilise reader expectation even as they disrupt the conventions of realist fiction. Taylor emerges as an ‘after-modernist’, a classification that exhibits both temporal and aesthetic qualities, signalling a writer engaged with the after-effects of war, while at the same time in conversation with the legacy of modernist poetics