This volume brings together eleven case studies that address how the night became visible in the long and global eighteenth century through different mediums and in different geographical contexts.
Situated on the eve of the introduction of artificial lighting, the long eighteenth century has much to say about night’s darkness and brilliance. The eighteenth century has been bound up epistemologically with images of light, reason, and order. Night and day, light and darkness, reason and mystery, however, are not necessarily at odds in the eighteenth century. In their analysis of narratives, poetry, urban spaces, music, the visual arts, and geological phenomena, the essays provide various frameworks to examine the representation, treatment, and meaning of the enlightened night.
The transnational and multidisciplinary nature of the volume presents a survey of the research currently being done in the field of the long eighteenth-century night. This collection contributes to an ongoing exercise that questions the accepted definitions of the Enlightenment, and by bringing Eighteenth-Century Studies into dialogue with Night Studies, it enriches the critical conversation between these lines of research.
Author(s): Pamela E. Phillips
Series: Routledge Studies in Eighteenth-Century Cultures and Societies
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 277
City: New York
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Figures
Table
List of Contributors
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: Introduction
A Nocturnal Timeline
The Nocturnal Eighteenth Century
Enlightening Night Studies
The Chapters
Notes
Part I: Nighttime Experiments
Chapter 2: Libertine Nocturnes, or The Many Marvels of the Enlightened Night
Introduction
Nocturnal Marvels, Nocturnal Revels
Curiouser and Curiouser: The Nocturnal Wonderland
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 3: Abysms on Open View: Terrestrial Expressions of Preternatural Darkness and Heavenly Night
The Surprising Entry into Night
More than the Sum of Parts: Pebbles of Information
Unseen Causes for Mammoth Effects
Settings and Theaters
Seeing is More than Believing: Optical Effects
Fascinating Rhythms: The Tempo of Geologic Change
The Sun Never Rises on Night’s Empire
The Clock-Free Personality
Notes
Chapter 4: “One Thousand Divine Truths”: Night, Darkness and the Sublime in the Poetry of Juan Meléndez Valdés
Night and the Sublime
Night as Solace
Night as Part of the Deist Cycle
Notes
Chapter 5: Shadowed Celebration: Goethe’s Klassische Walpurgisnacht and Creative Profusion
Introduction
A Dark Milieu
Walpurgis Nights
Notes
Part II: Nocturnal Visions
Chapter 6: Francisco de Goya’s Sleep of Reason and Other States of Somnolence in the Caprichos
Introduction
Sleep and Somnolence in the Caprichos
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 7: The Other Side of Night: Enlightened Dreaming in Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve’s Beauty and the Beast (1740)
The Rewriting of Night
Down the Layered Dreamscape: Dreams within a Dream
The Dream of Another Enlightenment
Notes
Chapter 8: Fire at Bedtime, or the Dangers of Sleep in France (1700–1830)
An Informative Engraving
The Nocturnal Fire Glorified by History Painting
The Libertine Conflagration of the Senses and Imagination
The Patriotic Flame
Conclusion
Notes
Part III: Nocturnal Sights and Sounds
Chapter 9: Early to Bed: Sleep, Artificial Light, and Entertainment in Eighteenth-Century Istanbul
Light and Sleep
Sunset
The Cost-Effectiveness of Early Sleep
Celebrating Light at Night
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 10: The Uncertainty of Evening in Seduction Narratives of the Early Republic
Seduction and the Evening Time
Not Doing Exactly Right
Great Good Places
Mask of Love
Rambling about in the Dusk
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 11: “Like a Night without Darkness”: Music and Nightscape in the Early Piano Nocturne (1810–1830)
The Piano Nocturne
Field’s Early Nocturnes and Chopin’s Op. 9 Trois Nocturnes pour le Pianoforte
Chopin’s Nightscape
The Musical Salon and a Circle of Colleagues
Notes
Chapter 12: The Haunted Industrialized Nightscape: Factories, Mills, and Ironworks at Night
Lighting up the Mills in Literature
Lighting up the Mills in Art
The Dark Industrial Revolution: Night Scenes
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
