Victorians' engagement with the past permitted a means by which they could express, and reconcile... more Victorians' engagement with the past permitted a means by which they could express, and reconcile themselves with, the emerging idea of the modern. Developments in sound technologies (namely, Edison's phonograph) created new ways of preserving the past and reviving it for the present moment. Edison's machine, first demonstrated in 1877, inaugurated a new method of recording history and preserving both personal and national memory. Initially proposed as a technology for dictation and as a secretarial aid, the phonograph became a multisensory index for memorialising Victorian culture for future generations. It therefore created a tension between old and new, and implied a rupture in understandings of chronological time and memory. The phonograph allowed for the physical and auditory containment of what had hitherto been psychological or visually recorded. Recognising the phonograph as a tactile embodiment of history and an aural record of the disembodied voice, Victorians viewed the machine as an uncanny vessel that defamiliarised ideas of time. In this essay, I argue that Victorians expressed, and came to terms with, modernity through an active engagement with the past. In particular, this expression is achieved through a conscious historicising of the present moment. In my chosen texts, Florence McLandburgh's 'The Automaton Ear', Arthur Conan Doyle's 'The Japanned Box', and Rudyard Kipling's 'The Finest Story in the World', the 'talking machines' become symbolic of the Victorians' attempts to archive the ancient and recent past, presenting a friction between technological advancement and the present creation of a historical relic. 1 Florence McLandburgh's 'The Automaton Ear' (1876) is concerned with what Pamela Thurschwell describes as the 'technological resuscitation' of sound. 2 Relenting that 'some individuals can distinguish sounds which to others […] would be wholly lost', 3 the narrator proposes the invention of 'an instrument which could catch these faint tones vibrating in the air and make them audible' (pp. 1-2). Like the
Throughout performance history, the body has been viewed as a chief locus of signification. Denis... more Throughout performance history, the body has been viewed as a chief locus of signification. Denis Diderot's Paradox of Acting concerns itself primarily with the actor's ability to materialise the feelings of a written text and to literalise them in time and space through his/her individual mastery of the text's aura.
Audiences' fascination with the performer's body in corporealising texts has extended into our contemporary performative milieu, with artists such as Marina Abramović and Ron Athey aiming to explore the limits of the body in expression and endurance. This, I argue, encourages the positioning of the body itself as a text to be interpreted. Yet, a long history of performance concerning the body can be traced outside of the theatrical space. Performance pervades and constitutes every aspect of our lives, influencing the fields of psychology, medicine, biology, and more.
In this essay, I aim to demonstrate the inherently performative nature of science – in particular, of the old operating theatre and its evolution into the modern laboratory. I suggest that science and performance are not mutually exclusive and, significantly to our understanding of the body as a signifying (and signified) text, I will analyse the ways in which the scientific space renders the body and how this is intrinsically theatrical in nature.
John Milton was occupied with the idea of education, writing treatises on how to teach to maintai... more John Milton was occupied with the idea of education, writing treatises on how to teach to maintain a civil society. Milton received private tutoring and a classical education, aiding him in his passion as an educational reformer. As a result of his schooling, Milton was cognizant of the forms of education at hand, and deemed a fit education essential for producing active political life and for religious ends. Critics have considered Paradise Lost both a literary and religious artefact, as well as an instrument of teaching. As a poetic retelling of Genesis, the poem has a strictly theodicic aim – to justify the ways of God to man and to attempt to answer the quintessential theological question of his time: why God allows evil to exist. In accepting this challenge, Milton presents his aim as twofold; firstly, to vindicate God's actions in expelling Adam and Eve from Paradise, and, secondly, to write '[t]hings unattempted yet in prose or rhyme'. 1 This sets Paradise Lost's accomplishment in both didactic and poetic terms, and, with the demonstrations of classical knowledge throughout, Milton requires a high level of literary and biblical competence from his readers. As I will explore, the process of edification is one that requires an active engagement from the reader, rather than a passive reception of theodicic insights. Milton's success as a teacher stems from the challenges he poses, encouraging an active effort to understand. From the opening of Book I, we are immersed in a classical landscape through Milton's parade of his own learning, which he deemed a necessary touchstone of political wisdom. Littering his lines with classical allusions to 'Oreb' (I.7) and 'Siloa's brook' (I.11), Milton undertakes a game of literary intimidation to discern the 'fit audience […] though few' (VII.31). Milton places responsibility on the reader for his/her ability to understand the intricacies of his poetic truth. Thus, by placing responsibility for sin upon man, Milton urges us to read the poem self-referentially and to take charge in our endeavour to reach Milton's theodicic lesson. We can therefore see our reading of Paradise Lost as an intellectual process that is just as significant as the learning's outcome. In order to grant this journey, Milton teaches by showing as much as by telling. By relating the story of Genesis through his own poetic 1 John Milton, Paradise Lost, ed. by Alastair Fowler (Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2007), I.16. All further references to this edition are given after quotations in the text.
Victorians' engagement with the past permitted a means by which they could express, and reconcile... more Victorians' engagement with the past permitted a means by which they could express, and reconcile themselves with, the emerging idea of the modern. Developments in sound technologies (namely, Edison's phonograph) created new ways of preserving the past and reviving it for the present moment. Edison's machine, first demonstrated in 1877, inaugurated a new method of recording history and preserving both personal and national memory. Initially proposed as a technology for dictation and as a secretarial aid, the phonograph became a multisensory index for memorialising Victorian culture for future generations. It therefore created a tension between old and new, and implied a rupture in understandings of chronological time and memory. The phonograph allowed for the physical and auditory containment of what had hitherto been psychological or visually recorded. Recognising the phonograph as a tactile embodiment of history and an aural record of the disembodied voice, Victorians viewed the machine as an uncanny vessel that defamiliarised ideas of time. In this essay, I argue that Victorians expressed, and came to terms with, modernity through an active engagement with the past. In particular, this expression is achieved through a conscious historicising of the present moment. In my chosen texts, Florence McLandburgh's 'The Automaton Ear', Arthur Conan Doyle's 'The Japanned Box', and Rudyard Kipling's 'The Finest Story in the World', the 'talking machines' become symbolic of the Victorians' attempts to archive the ancient and recent past, presenting a friction between technological advancement and the present creation of a historical relic. 1 Florence McLandburgh's 'The Automaton Ear' (1876) is concerned with what Pamela Thurschwell describes as the 'technological resuscitation' of sound. 2 Relenting that 'some individuals can distinguish sounds which to others […] would be wholly lost', 3 the narrator proposes the invention of 'an instrument which could catch these faint tones vibrating in the air and make them audible' (pp. 1-2). Like the
Throughout performance history, the body has been viewed as a chief locus of signification. Denis... more Throughout performance history, the body has been viewed as a chief locus of signification. Denis Diderot's Paradox of Acting concerns itself primarily with the actor's ability to materialise the feelings of a written text and to literalise them in time and space through his/her individual mastery of the text's aura.
Audiences' fascination with the performer's body in corporealising texts has extended into our contemporary performative milieu, with artists such as Marina Abramović and Ron Athey aiming to explore the limits of the body in expression and endurance. This, I argue, encourages the positioning of the body itself as a text to be interpreted. Yet, a long history of performance concerning the body can be traced outside of the theatrical space. Performance pervades and constitutes every aspect of our lives, influencing the fields of psychology, medicine, biology, and more.
In this essay, I aim to demonstrate the inherently performative nature of science – in particular, of the old operating theatre and its evolution into the modern laboratory. I suggest that science and performance are not mutually exclusive and, significantly to our understanding of the body as a signifying (and signified) text, I will analyse the ways in which the scientific space renders the body and how this is intrinsically theatrical in nature.
John Milton was occupied with the idea of education, writing treatises on how to teach to maintai... more John Milton was occupied with the idea of education, writing treatises on how to teach to maintain a civil society. Milton received private tutoring and a classical education, aiding him in his passion as an educational reformer. As a result of his schooling, Milton was cognizant of the forms of education at hand, and deemed a fit education essential for producing active political life and for religious ends. Critics have considered Paradise Lost both a literary and religious artefact, as well as an instrument of teaching. As a poetic retelling of Genesis, the poem has a strictly theodicic aim – to justify the ways of God to man and to attempt to answer the quintessential theological question of his time: why God allows evil to exist. In accepting this challenge, Milton presents his aim as twofold; firstly, to vindicate God's actions in expelling Adam and Eve from Paradise, and, secondly, to write '[t]hings unattempted yet in prose or rhyme'. 1 This sets Paradise Lost's accomplishment in both didactic and poetic terms, and, with the demonstrations of classical knowledge throughout, Milton requires a high level of literary and biblical competence from his readers. As I will explore, the process of edification is one that requires an active engagement from the reader, rather than a passive reception of theodicic insights. Milton's success as a teacher stems from the challenges he poses, encouraging an active effort to understand. From the opening of Book I, we are immersed in a classical landscape through Milton's parade of his own learning, which he deemed a necessary touchstone of political wisdom. Littering his lines with classical allusions to 'Oreb' (I.7) and 'Siloa's brook' (I.11), Milton undertakes a game of literary intimidation to discern the 'fit audience […] though few' (VII.31). Milton places responsibility on the reader for his/her ability to understand the intricacies of his poetic truth. Thus, by placing responsibility for sin upon man, Milton urges us to read the poem self-referentially and to take charge in our endeavour to reach Milton's theodicic lesson. We can therefore see our reading of Paradise Lost as an intellectual process that is just as significant as the learning's outcome. In order to grant this journey, Milton teaches by showing as much as by telling. By relating the story of Genesis through his own poetic 1 John Milton, Paradise Lost, ed. by Alastair Fowler (Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2007), I.16. All further references to this edition are given after quotations in the text.
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Papers by Rebecca Salter
Audiences' fascination with the performer's body in corporealising texts has extended into our contemporary performative milieu, with artists such as Marina Abramović and Ron Athey aiming to explore the limits of the body in expression and endurance. This, I argue, encourages the positioning of the body itself as a text to be interpreted. Yet, a long history of performance concerning the body can be traced outside of the theatrical space. Performance pervades and constitutes every aspect of our lives, influencing the fields of psychology, medicine, biology, and more.
In this essay, I aim to demonstrate the inherently performative nature of science – in particular, of the old operating theatre and its evolution into the modern laboratory. I suggest that science and performance are not mutually exclusive and, significantly to our understanding of the body as a signifying (and signified) text, I will analyse the ways in which the scientific space renders the body and how this is intrinsically theatrical in nature.
Audiences' fascination with the performer's body in corporealising texts has extended into our contemporary performative milieu, with artists such as Marina Abramović and Ron Athey aiming to explore the limits of the body in expression and endurance. This, I argue, encourages the positioning of the body itself as a text to be interpreted. Yet, a long history of performance concerning the body can be traced outside of the theatrical space. Performance pervades and constitutes every aspect of our lives, influencing the fields of psychology, medicine, biology, and more.
In this essay, I aim to demonstrate the inherently performative nature of science – in particular, of the old operating theatre and its evolution into the modern laboratory. I suggest that science and performance are not mutually exclusive and, significantly to our understanding of the body as a signifying (and signified) text, I will analyse the ways in which the scientific space renders the body and how this is intrinsically theatrical in nature.