Tag: Eighteenth Century
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A Brief History of the Medieval Revival
As industrialisation swelled in the Western world, societies looked towards the medieval past as a means of legitimising their history. Megan Crutchley explores the forms this took in the US and UK, and the manner in which it was embedded in white elitism.
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Investigating Female Liberation Inside the Eighteenth-Century British Masquerade
Written by Boryana Ivanova. The masquerade ball carries a long and varied history, but how did the eighteenth century masquerade become imagined places of pleasure, excess and female liberation?
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Dido Elizabeth Belle, and the mysteries behind the painting at Scone Palace
Written by Sophie Whitehead. The portrait of Lady Elizabeth and Dido Belle has fascinated historians and allowed us a glimpse into Black History in the eighteenth century. But who was she? And how has she been understood by historians and art critics since the painting’s production?
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Editing the Jamaica Reader: A Conversation with Professor Diana Paton and Professor Matthew Smith
Professor Diana Paton and Professor Matthew Smith sit down with Retrospect’s EIC, Jamie Gemmell, to discuss their new volume: The Jamaica Reader: History, Culture, Politics.
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Redefining Humanity: Political Philosophy in African British Anti-Slavery Literature
Written by Charlie Horlick. Ottobah Cugoano’s writing has been typically framed as a slave narrative, yet it is perhaps more than that. Part political economy, part meditation on morality, it should be integrated into the canon of eighteenth-century philosophy.
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Historical time and the Enlightenment Re-imaginings of Moses and Solomon
Written by Inge Erdal. The nature of historical time has always been contested. Through the Enlightenment and nineteenth century, as European empires spread across the globe, writers slid between the boundaries of fiction and history, trying to unpack stories from the Bible.
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“Know No Shame”: Black Sails and Writing the Historical Fiction of Sexuality
Written by Jess Womack. The television series, Black Sails, approaches the question of “pre-modern” sexuality. Through a range of individual experiences, it offers a route to writing the historical fiction of sexuality.
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Review: Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World, Jessica Marie Johnson (2020)
Written by Jamie Gemmell. Dr. Jessica Marie Johnson’s 2020 book explores the lives of black women in colonial Louisiana. Beginning in West Africa and moving through colonial rule to the formation of the USA to produce a history of the Atlantic world.
Retrospect Journal 