A long 18th century? _What_ 18th century!

Antonio Canaletto, a rare full-size sketch of a gentleman and lady (usually these are tiny figures inside a large varied landscape)

Dear friends and readers,

Has anyone else read the latest issue of PMLA where Joan DeJean said she went looking for an explanation for the success of the new “long 18th century” in various colleges and found that in fact the era has been eliminated altogether, erased, abolished in many non-English language departments around the US: Joan DeJean, “A Long Eighteenth Century: What Eighteenth Century?” PMLA 127:2 (2012):317-20.

It may be that this abolition is not true of English departments, but there I’ve seen the department itself begin to be abolished. Where I teach nowadays there is only 1 course of general education literature required across the college (when there was once 2-3) and that can be fulfilled by courses from other departments (where that could only be fulfilled by genuine period and serious theme courses given by the English department.

Her article confirms what I’ve seen in general: the abolition of humanities courses of all sorts. It also coheres with what I’ve seen others teach in the general education introductory literature courses. I used to teach one — I did it for about 10 years on and off. It’s now abolished: I did the two parter I’ll call the first half of British literature and the second half. There was also a one term version; I did notice other colleagues who did the one term version especially would do a couple of famous medieval, and Renaissance works and then basically leap to the 19th century. One reason towards the end I did separate books (I did not order the Norton) was it enabled me to chose what I thought would be more popular (Fielding’s Joseph Andrews, Gay’s Beggar’s Opera), work I simply liked better (I’d use Cruttwell’s Penguin of Johnson), ” to go outside English (I’d assign Lafayette’s La Princesse de Cleves in English) …

A great loss.

Another favorite picture:

Ducrois and Valpato, View of Temple of Sibyl at Tivoli

I have it as the wallpaper on my laptop

The picture combines elements of the drawing and watercolor art of
Piranesi (dream fantasias) and Wilson (idealized but apparently real)
with a real penchant for unidealized figures and places:

Just this sort of vision lies behind the novels of Radcliffe (and her gothic school) as well as Goethe (who didn’t have a school of followers, but can be likened to the Johnson of Rasselas here). It was disseminated through prints.

Of this lovely scene Kathleen Stuart (Tales and Travels, the book of prints of watercolors from the recent exhibition at the Pierpont Morgan I’ve been drawing on for a number of weeks now) writes:

“The work seen here depicts a view of the ancient city of Tivoli, on the Aniene River about twenty miles east of Rome. Famed for its picturesque terrain and dramatic waterfall, Tivoli was one of the most popular destinations for travelers on the Grand Tour. It was also the site of the first-century B.C. Temple of the Sybil, seen here in the center of the composition. The temple was a frequent subject for artists of the day, who commonly focused on it as an architectural ruin: for example, the engraving by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) in which the temple is isolated and seen in foreshortened view from below –or as an emblem of classical
antiquity set in an ideal landscape; as in Richatd Wilson’s painting of about 1754, Landscape Capriccio on the Via Aemilia, with the Temple of the Sybil at Tivoli and the Broken Bridge at Narni

By contrast, Ducros represented the temple as unidealized, viewed from the side instead of head-on, and blending into the neighboring buildings and verrdant surroundings, with a group of figures in the foreground engaged in the activities of daily life. Ducros depicted the temple in at least two other finished watercolors, both viewed from the river upstream from the falls (Musee cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne; Kenwood and elsewhere

Of the artists she tells us:

“Born in Switzerland, Ducros trained in Geneva before traveling to Rome in 1776. There he quickly established himself as a specialist in large, highly finished topographical landscapes in watercolor, which were prized for their realism by visitors on the Grand Tour. In 1779 Ducros entered into a partnership with the printmaker Giovanni Volpato to produce engraved souvenir views of Rome. Volpato, who had settled in Rome in 1771, was famous for his engravings after Raphael’s frescoes in the Vatican logge. The partnership of Ducros and Volparo flourished, and in 1780 they issued their first series of prints, Vues de Rome et des ses environs, which was published in Rome to great commercial success.”

For that matter what humanities? In the latest move to destroy libraries, the NYPL is dismantling its serious research capacities which have served the ordinary person (with no connections, who merely needed to reside in the city): See reproduced letter in comments.

A tragic loss.

Ellen