33 research outputs found
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John Evelyn as modern architect and ancient gardener: 'lessons of perpetual practice'
This chapter investigates some of the axes of parallelism that were drawn up during the quarrel of the ancient and moderns: historical, linguistic, technical and aesthetic. Its focus is on a French text that slightly precedes the main period of the querelle, Roland FrĂŠart de Chambrayâs Parallèle de l'architecture antique avec la moderne (Paris, 1650) and its English translation by John Evelyn (1664). The Parallèle exemplifies a mode of comparative, critical inquiry that was characteristically modernistic. But its translation and publication in England lifted it into cultural context in many ways at odds with that from which it came, and the consequence was a twisting or refraction of its meanings that tells us much about the differences between the French and English modes of the ancients-moderns quarrel. A further set of distorting parallels are provided by Vitruvian architectureâs own equivocal position on the fault-line between ancient and modern technology, and between degraded techne and liberal praxis arts. These parallels correspond with similar tensions within the broader experimental and socio-mechanical project instituted in the Royal Society, of which Evelyn was an active member during the 1660s
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Gulliver, medium, technique
In the four Parts of Gulliverâs Travels the narrator attends closely to the manual skills, crafts and techniques of the different countries visited and to the materials and instruments by which they are mediated. The patterned, motif-like presentation of these observations and their rich contextual background, historical and literary, indicate their special significance. These references to technique play an important, previously underappreciated roll in Gulliver. They form a thematic connection between its embodied, sensual, compulsive descriptions of the world and its socio-political satire, the latter focusing on technocratic, professionalized statecraft. They are crucial to the peculiar fullness with which Swiftâs writing imagines different communities of practice, different ecologies of mind
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Robinson Crusoe and the natural mechanick
In recent studies of Robinson Crusoe there has been a revival of interest in the material culture of Defoeâs novelâits handling of crafted objects, of building and dwelling, of desert island things. These responses have tended to find a positive attitude in Defoeâs material representations. This essay questions the increasingly received reading of Crusoe as homo faber and complete natural technologist. It finds instead a sustained strand of irony running through all of Defoeâs commentary on mechanical processes and cultures of manufacture. It also suggests a positive reason for Defoeâs scepticism. He presents a scheme of material production in which the basic components of manufactureâlabour, raw materials, instrumental ends, timeâare perfectly legible and deducible to the reasoning observer. Consequently he must make sure that there is no intervening layer of personal knowledge, of artisanal mystery or ornament, that might obscure this conjectural vision
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Swift's razor
The razors, knives and âtools for cuttingâ that appear so often in Jonathan Swiftâs writings represent linguistic instruments for the performance of speech acts. Swift often imagines them being deployed for some identifiable purpose, typically the discouragement of âfoolsâ or âknavesâ by anatomization. Their sharpness is associated with linguistic acuity, and specifically with the refinement, keenness and power of Swiftâs own writing. The focus of this article, however, is on another set of associations that Swift attaches to his blades. They tend also to involve ideas of latency, divagation, bluntness, and misappropriation
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The satirists and the experts
Attacks on the status of the mandarin classes have become a common feature of public debate since Michael Goveâs famous declaration that we have all "had enough of experts". But Gove echoes some old themes in British political writing. This paper uncovers the source of those echoes in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century writings on the âcraftâ of government, and in contemporary satirical literature. In A Tale of a Tub and Gulliverâs Travels Jonathan Swift combined satire on Sir Robert Walpoleâs technocratic statecraft with a broader attack on the emerging professional classes. But the violence of his satire was mitigated by his sense of how manual expertise might serve as a positive analogy for a statesmanship that is at once materially grounded and ethically ambitious. But does this eighteenth-century line of thinking still resonate in todayâs crisis of expertise
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Describing eighteenth-century British satire
This introductory chapter looks at the problem of how we should describe eighteenth-century satire, and considers how to place it historically in the British eighteenth century. It gathers key literary extracts and anecdotes from the period, statements in which different discussions of satire intersect with larger ideas about the periodâs culture and society. The chapter is organized into three sections. The first looks at satirical commonalities, including the uses of satire in associational life, the body of commonplace critical opinion about its function, and its connection with emerging constructions of British nationhood. The second turns to literary satireâs material forms, looking for patterns in the way it was consumed by readers of printed books. The third moves on from these generalized contexts to examine some of satireâs personal, particular implications, including the question of whether satire should always be general, whether it could avoid referring to individuals.
Keywords: description; conversation; ridicule; nation; book history; poetical miscellanies; Daniel Defoe; impersonality; epitaphs; sentiment; sensibility
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Against the experts: Swift and political satire
This chapter looks at Jonathan Swiftâs political satire, focusing on a crucial, seldom-discussed and newly-relevant theme: his deep hostility towards experts. It argues that Swift and his allies understood expertise in terms of a broader anti-technical idea of statesmanship, one that also advocated âcommon senseâ as a positive model for political deliberation, and âwitâ as a model for discourse. Satire was a common medium for articulating this programme, often in terms that were themselves doubled and ironized. Swift and many of his associates deplored secrecy and innuendo in political life and, at the same time, appropriated them as modes for oppositional satire. They painted modern instrumental thinking and modern technocratic politics as dull and clumsy, while adopting the discourses of those experts parodically as âmock-artsâ. It was the interrelations between this group of satirical themes and political topoi that gave them power and significance at the start of the eighteenth century.
Keywords: expert; technique; craft; statecraft; dexterity; experience; Walpole; Craftsman; Gulliverâs Travels; politics; statesmanship; innuendo; corruption; Machiavellian
State of knowledge on UK agricultural peatlands for food production and the net zero transition
Agricultural peatlands are the most productive soils in the UK for the cultivation of many food crops. Historical drainage of peat for agriculture (i.e., cropland and managed grassland), without consideration of other associated environmental and climatic impacts, has resulted in a significant emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs). There is a need to reduce GHG emissions without compromising the rural economy and jeopardizing food security in the UK to a greater extent than is currently being experienced. In March 2023, in a bid to identify alternative land management systems for agricultural peatlands to support the UKâs commitment to achieving net zero GHG emissions by 2050, a group of forty investigators met at a workshop convened by the AgriFood4NetZero Network+. The workshop reviewed the state of knowledge surrounding the Fens of Eastern England and their importance for food provision, the economy, cultural identity, and climate change mitigation. A broad consensus emerged for research into how GHG emissions from agricultural peatlands could be reduced, whether alternative farming methods, such as seasonal farming or paludiculture, would offer a solution, and how a localized approach for the Fens could be defined. The development of a holistic, inclusive, and plausible land use scenario that considers all aspects of ecosystem services provided by the Fens is urgently needed