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"Method of this work:
literary montage.
I have nothing to say only to show." (Passagenwerk (1927 - 1940) - Walter Benjamin)
2005, Oct 05; 11:04 ::: Stigma : Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (1963) - Erving Goffman
Stigma : Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (1963) - Erving Goffman [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Book Description
Stigma is an illuminating excursion into the situation of persons who are unable to conform to standards that society calls normal. Disqualified from full social acceptance, they are stigmatized individuals. Physically deformed people, ex-mental patients, drug addicts, prostitutes, or those ostracized for other reasons must constantly strive to adjust to their precarious social identities. Their image of themselves must daily confront and be affronted by the image which others reflect back to them.Drawing extensively on autobiographies and case studies, sociologist Erving Goffman analyzes the stigmatized person's feelings about himself and his relationship to "normals" He explores the variety of strategies stigmatized individuals employ to deal with the rejection of others, and the complex sorts of information about themselves they project. In Stigma the interplay of alternatives the stigmatized individual must face every day is brilliantly examined by one of America's leading social analysts.
About the Author
Erving Goffman was born in Manville, Alberta (Canada) in 1922. He came to the United States in 1945, and in 1953 received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago. He was professor of sociology at the University of California at Berkeley until 1968, and thereafter was Benjamin Franklin Professor of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Dr. Goffman received the MacIver Award in 1961 and the In Medias Res Award in 1978. He was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He died in 1983.Dr. Goffman's books include The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Encounters, Asylums, Behavior in Public Places, Stigma, Interaction Ritual, Strategic Interaction, Relations in Public, Frame Analysis, and Gender Advertisements.
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erving_Goffman
See also: 1963 - normal - deviance - identity - sociology - USA
2005, Oct 04; 22:17 ::: James Broughton
The Bed (1968) - James Broughton
A perfect visual representation of the polymorphously perverse eroticism of the American counterculture and its Zen-like acceptance of all sexes and possibilities as one. Even the camera angle emphasizes the casualness and joyful abandon with which sex is viewed by the moment.
The entire cast of this delightful, wise manifesto of counterculture sensibility performs in the nude. An ornate bed, magically located in a meadow, provides as always, the stage for man's most significantmoments; birth, sex, death. The actors, who exuberantly perform scenes of the human comedy, include Imogene Cunningham, Alan Watts, and other San Francisco artists and writers. While even avant-garde nudity seems often to betray an absence of joyful or uncomplicated sex, The Bed displays a smiling, polymorphously-perverse eroticism.
For once, penises appear in love scenes, but they are limp, denoting not impotence but the precise moment in time at which this film was made. --via the 2005 reprint of Film As a Subversive Art (1974) - Amos Vogel
The Golden Positions (1971) - James Broughton and Kermit Sheets
James Broughton (November 10, 1913–May 17, 1999) was "first and foremost a poet", a playwright, and avant-garde filmmaker. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Broughton [Sept 2005]
See also: James Broughton - avant-garde film - experimental film
2005, Oct 04; 19:17 ::: Frankenstein month at the Groovy age of HorrorIt's Frankenstein month at the Groovy age of Horror blog. Curt is digging up every possible connection to Frankenstein fiction, inviting to a debate on Hammer and Universal Frankenstein's films. Below is the story of Curt buying Olympia Press's version Frankenstein 69.
Frankenstein 69 (1969) - Ed Martin
Cover of London Olympia edition, 1972
Image sourced here.
Frankenstein 69 (1969) - Ed Martin (Generic Traveller's Companion cover)
Image sourced here.Oh what a disappointment!! First of all, this thing was ridiculously expensive. In hard copy, that is--it's downloadable in various formats (including pdf) for $1 from Olympia Press. Even at that price, I'd highly recommend you stay away from this shit.
So why did I go for the book instead of the download? Well, you knows how I likes to supply my own cover scans at Groovy Age, and I thought I'd be getting the somewhat interesting photo cover pictured in the Trash Fiction review. Instead, as you can plainly see (pun intended), I got the plain green cover of the Traveller's Companion Series. --http://groovyageofhorror.blogspot.com/2005/10/frankenstein-69-by-ed-martin-olympia.html [Oct 2005]
See also: groovy - Frankenstein
2005, Oct 04; 19:17 ::: Olympia Press
Cover of OLYMPIA magazine issue #1 January 1962
Image sourced here.There was a time when Olympia Press, the publishing company founded by Maurice Girodias, was at the leading edge of modern fiction, bringing us the likes of William Burroughs, Lawrence Durrell and Henry Miller. Now, personally I'm of the opinion that the world would have been in no way impoverished if none of these authors had ever published a single word, but I'm aware that in some quarters there are some people who even now still rate this kind of proto-hippy self-indulgence. More usefully, in the period before the Lady Chatterley trial, Olympia was the only publishing house which was prepared to issue English-language editions of the likes of de Sade and Jean Genet. (Being based in Paris, you see, it escaped the absurdly draconian British obscenity laws.)
By the 1960s, however, all of this had changed. Pretty much anything was now publishable by pretty much anyone, and Olympia - relocated to London - had lost its edge. What they ended up with was nonsense like this: a truly awful bit of sci-fi porn that leaves nothing to the imagination and owes nothing to inspiration. It's not erotic, it's not big and it's not clever. --http://www.trashfiction.co.uk/frankenstein_69.html [Oct 2005]
See also: Olympia Press - publishing - erotic fiction
2005, Oct 04; 14:17 ::: The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901) - Sigmund Freud
The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901) - Sigmund Freud [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Book Description
The most trivial slips of the tongue or pen, Freud believed, can reveal our secret ambitions, worries, and fantasies. The Psychopathology of Everyday Life ranks among his most enjoyable works. Starting with the story of how he once forgot the name of an Italian painter-and how a young acquaintance mangled a quotation from Virgil through fears that his girlfriend might be pregnant-it brings together a treasure trove of muddled memories, inadvertent actions, and verbal tangles. Amusing, moving, and deeply revealing of the repressed, hypocritical Viennese society of his day, Freud's dazzling interpretations provide the perfect introduction to psychoanalytic thinking in action. --via Amazon.comFreudian slip
The Freudian slip is named after Sigmund Freud, who described the phenomena he called faulty action (Fehlleistung or parapraxis) in his 1901 book The Psychopathology of Everyday Life.The Freudian slip is an error in human action, speech or memory that is caused by the unconscious mind. The error often appears to the observer as being casual, bizarre and nonsensical.
Although it is certainly true that not all errors done by humans can be explained as Freudian slips, such behavior is often analyzed on the basis that they may be. "Sometimes the truth has a way of coming out in the most embarrassing and unexpected ways." Although this may be true in many cases, such analysis should certainly be treated with skepticism. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freudian_slip [Oct 2005]
See also: 1901 - Sigmund Freud - secret - unconscious - psychopath - everyday - life
2005, Oct 04; 14:17 ::: Historical significance of writing systemsHistorians draw a distinction between prehistory and history, with history defined by the advent of writing. The cave paintings and petroglyphs of prehistoric peoples can be considered precursors of writing, but are not considered writing because they did not represent language directly. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing#Historical_significance_of_writing_systems [Oct 2005]
All excerpts on movable type printing and writing in Walter Benjamin's WAAMR
[W]ith the woodcut graphic art became mechanically reproducible for the first time, long before script became reproducible by print. The enormous changes which printing, the mechanical reproduction of writing, has brought about in literature are a familiar story. However, within the phenomenon which we are here examining from the perspective of world history, print is merely a special, though particularly important, case. --The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935/1936) - Walter Benjamin
[L]ithography enabled graphic art to illustrate everyday life, and it began to keep pace with printing. [in its ability to keep up with the speed of writing. --The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935/1936) - Walter Benjamin
[F]or centuries a small number of writers were confronted by many thousands of readers. This changed toward the end of the last century. With the increasing extension of the press, which kept placing new political, religious, scientific, professional, and local organs before the readers, an increasing number of readers became writers - at first, occasional ones. It began with the daily press opening to its readers space for 'letters to the editor.' And today there is hardly a gainfully employed European who could not, in principle, find an opportunity to publish somewhere or other comments on his work, grievances, documentary reports, or that sort of thing. Thus, the distinction between author and public is about to lose its basic character. The difference becomes merely functional; it may vary from case to case. At any moment the reader is ready to turn into a writer.] --The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935/1936) - Walter Benjamin
See also: Prehistory - history - recording - writing
2005, Oct 04; 13:17 ::: Ancient history (-5000 - 500)Ancient history is the study of significant cultural and political events from the beginning of human history until the Early Middle Ages. Although the ending date is largely arbitrary, most Western scholars use the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD as the traditional end of ancient history. Another term that is often used to refer to ancient history is antiquity, although this term is most often used to refer specifically to the civilizations of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome.
The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000-5,500 years, with Sumerian cuneiform being the oldest form of writing discovered so far. Genetic evidence, however, points to the first appearance of human beings about 150,000 years ago. There is also a growing body of evidence that Homo sapiens first left Africa about 60,000 years ago. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_history [Oct 2005]
See also: history - Rome - Greece - Ancient history
2005, Oct 04; 13:17 ::: Premodernity (500-1500)In the context of philosophical thought, Premodernity is the period in Western civilization that came after Ancient history and before Modernity, which is usually recognized to have begun in the mid-1400s, marked by the invention of movable type and the printing press. Premodernity is thought to have begun about 500; thus it spans almost 1000 years.
Premodern worldview
In the premodern era, truth was derived from authority (usually a god or gods), and was received through spiritual intermediaries in the form of religious officials. The common person did not have access to the divine except through the intermediaries, who often held positions of power. Tradition was seen as unshakeable and sacred. The state of things was generally seen as unchanging, and the social order was strictly enforced. People had very little means to make sense of the world around them, and so they explained the world they lived in largely through myth; thus the unknown became known, in a sense.The end of premodernity
Western civilization made a gradual transition from premodernity to modernity when scientific methods were developed which led many to believe that the use of science would lead to all knowledge, thus throwing back the shroud of myth under which premoderns lived. Truth was seen as discoverable by empirical observation, and it was believed that eventually all the world's problems would be solved by applying the appropriate tools to the issues. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premodernity [Oct 2005]In the description above, premodernity seems to coincide with the Middle Ages.
See also: history - Middle Ages - Modernity - Postmodernity
2005, Oct 03; 23:29 ::: Virgin and Child Surrounded by Angels (c.1450) - Jean Fouquet
Virgin and Child Surrounded by Angels (c.1450) - Jean Fouquet Wood, 93 x 85 cm Antwerp
Jean Fouquet (or Jehan Fouquet, 1420 - 1481) was a French painter. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Fouquet [Oct 2005]
See also: 1400s - France - art
2005, Oct 03; 23:29 ::: Capricci (1617) - Jacques Callot
Capricci (1617) - Jacques Callot
Image sourced here.Capriccio als Begriff der Kunsttheorie bezeichnet den absichtlichen, lustvollen Regelverstoß, die phantasievolle, spielerische Überschreitung der akademischen Normen, ohne die Norm außer Kraft zu setzen.
See also: 1600s - mannerism - grotesque - capriccio - France - Jacques Callot
2005, Oct 03; 22:29 ::: Louvre museum, Paris, France
Louvre museum, Paris, France
The Louvre Museum (Musée du Louvre) in Paris, France, is one of the largest and most famous museums in the world. The building, a former royal palace, lies in the centre of Paris, between the Seine river and the Rue de Rivoli. Its central courtyard, now occupied by the Louvre glass pyramid, lies in the axis of the Champs-Élysées, and thus forms the nucleus from which the Axe historique springs. Part of the royal Palace of the Louvre was first opened to the public as a museum on November 8, 1793, during the French Revolution. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louvre [Oct 2005]
See also: French culture - museum
2005, Oct 03; 21:34 ::: Woman on a Balcony (Frau auf dem Söller) (1824) - Carl Gustav Carus (1789-1869)
Woman on a Balcony (Frau auf dem Söller) (1824) - Carl Gustav Carus (1789-1869)
This picture was also chosen as cover illustration for the 1998 reprint of the Oxford Classics edition of Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho. When Carus's painting is placed against Cassandra Austen's drawing of Jane Austen (often misinterpreted as simply coming out of a perverse refusal to show Jane Austen's face), we see Cassandra's drawing would have been understood as one of a woman absorbed in imaginative reverie. Compare also the illustration to the Italian version of The Romance of the Forest (Gli Assissini de Ercolano, 1871), chosen as cover illustration for Rictor Norton's biography of Ann Radcliffe, Mistress of Udolpho. Isabelle de Montolieu's texts mediate between those of Ann Radcliffe and Jane Austen. All three pictures are appropriate to the self-conception and relation of author to text for all three women. --http://www.jimandellen.org/montolieu/chateaux.suisses.html [Oct 2005]
Carl Gustav Carus (1789 – 1869) was a German physiologist and painter, born at Leipzig. He was a many-sided man, and an advocate of the theory that health of body and mind depends on the equipoise of antagonistic principles. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Gustav_Carus [Oct 2005]
See also: 1820s - German art
2005, Oct 03; 14:04 ::: Live and mediated popular cultureAn important moment in the history of popular culture is the moment that culture went from "live culture" (the audience was present in the same location as the cultural manifestation or performance) to "mediated culture" (the cultural manifestation was first recorded and played back at a later date by the audience).
This happened first in the sixteenth and seventeenth century when the invention of moveable type gave birth to books (instead of copied manuscripts) and print culture.
In the early twentieth century, this conversion happened to music and theatre. Music was recorded to be played back by a phonograph of gramophone. Theatre was filmed and played back in the cinema.
The period of the 1920s to the 1950s saw the development of "live" mediated entertainment (radio and television broadcasts).
See also: aura - entertainment - playback - popular culture - media - medium - mass media - Work of Art in the Age of ...
2005, Oct 03; 14:04 ::: William Morris's artichoke
"Artichoke" wallpaper, by John Henry Dearle for William Morris & Co., ca 1897 (Victoria and Albert Museum)
Image sourced here.See also: 1897 - William Morris - Arts and Crafts
2005, Oct 03; 13:34 ::: Recording consciousnessBennett (1980, p.114) describes the development of recording consciousness, the consequence of "a society which is literally wired for sound" in which, according to Richard Middleton (1990, p.88) "this consciousness defines the social reality of popular music." "Acoustic instruments and unamplified, 'pure'-tone singing can now not be heard except as constrasts to more recent kinds of sounds, just as live perfromances are inevitably 'checked' against memories of recordings," and "live performances have to try to approximate the sounds which inhabit this consciousness."
"Similarly, musicians learn to play, and learn specific songs, from records, and so 'recording consciousness' helps to explain the ubiquity of non-literate composition methods: 'sheet music is just for people who can't hear' (musician quoted in Bennett 1980, p.139) The structure of this consciousness has been produced by various elements, among them experience of editing techniques, reverberation and echo, use of equalization to alter timbre, high decibel levels, both in general and in particular parts of the texture (notably, strong bass-lines), and, most interestingly, the 'polyvocality' created by multi-mike or multi-channel recording. Mixing different 'earpoints' produces a 'way of hearing [that] is an acoustic expectation for anyone who listens to contemporary recordings. It cannot be achieved without the aid of electronic devices. It has never before existed on earth' (ibid, p.119)." (Middleton 1990, p.88) --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recording_consciousness [Oct 2005]
See also: playback - recording - sound - consciousness - popular music
2005, Oct 03; 12:34 ::: Intangible cultureIntangible culture is the opposite of culture which is tangible or touchable such as a castle, a statue, musical score, or a painting. Intangible culture includes song, music, drama, skills, and other the parts of culture that can be recorded but cannot be touched and interacted with, without a vehicle for the culture. These cultural vehicles are called "Human Treasures" by the UN.
Several countries in addition to UNESCO are making efforts to protect intangible culture. Most notable are Japan (instituted a law in 1950 protecting intangible culture) and the Republic of Korea (1962).
In 2003 UNESCO adopted the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. This will go into effect after at least 30 countries ratify it. That should happen in 2005. UNESCO also has created other intangible culture programs, such as a list called Proclamation of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. This list began in 2001 with 19 items and a further 28 were listed in 2003. In 2005 another list will be issued. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intangible_culture [Oct 2005]
See also: culture - oral - tradition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Today [Oct 2005]
2005, Oct 03; 07:54 ::: TodayBirths of Steve Reich, Pierre Bonnard and Louis Aragon. Death of William Morris.
See also: October
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Today [Oct 2005]
2005, Oct 02; 23:36 ::: Today1968: death of Marcel Duchamp, French artist (b. 1887)
See also: October
2005, Oct 02; 22:42 ::: Virtue in distress: Studies in the novel of sentiment from Richardson to Sade (1974) - R. F Brissenden
Virtue in distress: Studies in the novel of sentiment from Richardson to Sade (1974) - R. F Brissenden [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
See also: virtue - sentimentalism - novel
2005, Oct 02; 22:42 ::: The myth of mass culture (1977) - Alan Swingewood
The myth of mass culture (1977) - Alan Swingewood [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
See also: mass - culture - Marxism
2005, Oct 02; 22:01 ::: History of popular culture and the cityThe growth of modern industry from the late 18th century onward led to massive urbanization and the rise of new great cities, first in Europe and then in other regions, as new opportunities brought huge numbers of migrants from rural communities into urban areas. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City#History_of_cities [Oct 2005]
See also: city - 1700s - popular culture
2005, Oct 02; 21:47 ::: Sentiment and Sociability: The Language of Feeling in the Eighteenth Century (1990) - John Mullan
Sentiment and Sociability: The Language of Feeling in the Eighteenth Century (1990) - John Mullan [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Book Description
With the rise of the novel in the mid-eighteenth century came the rise of sentimentalism. While the fondness for sentiment embarrassed later literary critics, it originally legitimized a morally suspect phenomenon: the novel. This book describes that legitimation, yet it looks beyond the narrowly literary to the lives and expressed philosophies of some of the major writers of the age, showing the language of feeling to be a resource of philosophers like David Hume and Adam Smith, as much as novelists like Richardson and Sterne. --via Amazon.co.ukSee also: John Mullan - sentimentalism - feeling - UK - 1700s
2005, Oct 02; 21:47 ::: Eighteenth-Century Popular Culture: A Selection (2000) - John Mullan (Editor), Christopher Reid (Editor)
Eighteenth-Century Popular Culture: A Selection (2000) - John Mullan (Editor), Christopher Reid (Editor) [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
See also: John Mullan - popular culture - UK - 1700s
Stephen Bayley on Roland Barthes in The Independent: "Had he not been run over by a laundry truck on a Paris street in 1980, Roland Barthes would today be writing about Saddam's moustache, Beckham's crosses, Rollerblades and The Simpsons. Or any other signs that give meaning to our world. Barthes was France's most successful intellectual, and his interests included literature, history, theatre, painting, advertising, design, photography and Moroccan boys. These, north African youth apart, are all collected in a new exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in the city he made his own. Given the way he helped shape our view of the world, the exhibition is entirely justified. Barthes interrogated the everyday world, moving from formal literary criticism to writing brilliantly on steak and chips, Arcimboldo and the Tour de France. It is a happy accident of homophonics that the most endearing champions of popular culture, in theory and practice, are each pronounced Bart -- the professor would have enjoyed consanguinity with The Simpsons. Equally, it is haunting evidence of his legacy that the precise details of the fatal laundry truck still beg to be explained. Barthes had certainly written perceptively on detergents ('dirt is no longer stripped from the surface, but expelled from its most secret cells'). Surely the camion de la blanchisserie must signify something? Was the offending vehicle a Unic a Saviem or a Berliet? Barthes would have wanted to know. We have no one quite like Roland Barthes: our idea of an intellectual is someone more resembling Jeremy Paxman than this suave Parisian boulevardier. Obsessed with thinking about thinking, Barthes' life was a stylish intellectual adventure. He was also a hedonist, a meticulous dresser, gay, sensitive, sardonic, sociable, gossipy. He made reading a sacrament. A lonely, tubercular youth became a Professor of Pleasure. For Barthes, dealing with a text was an erotic transaction: reading was 'jouissance', a word which means both joy and 'coming' in the sexual sense. To experience this enjoyable sense of escape, Barthes argued, you need to get in deeper.
2005, Oct 02; 00:59 ::: Stephen Bayley on Roland Barthes
But these same texts which engaged him sensually were also 'signs'. And signs became Roland Barthes' business. He began writing in 1947 in Albert Camus' little magazine Combat, essays subsequently published in 1953 as Le Degré zéro de l'écriture. 'Degré zéro' may be translated as 'bottom line'. This quest for the essence preoccupied Barthes. . . . Barthes, who was born in Cherbourg in 1915, effortlessly crossed barriers between the daunting Collège de France and St Germain's more welcoming Café Flore, still in the brainy and bookish afterglow of its Sartre-de Beauvoir period. But Jean-Paul Sartre and Barthes could not have been more different -- one a priapic old goat, the other an elegant eagle-nosed, ebony-eyed Antinous. Indeed, the example of Barthes confirms every jealous English prejudice about the French: he managed to be intellectually fastidious and immensely popular. Never, as Nietzsche said, trust a god who can't dance.
. . . Through Barthes, the structuralist view of the world has passed effortlessly into the mainstream of modern thought, so much so that it is difficult to appreciate now the freshness of his insights. Meanwhile, in the closed world of French universities, after the laundry-truck incident, new intellectual fashions began to strut the academic catwalk. The appealing subtleties of structuralism were replaced by the ponderous absurdities of deconstruction. Barthes' successors have included a lot of morally and intellectually bankrupt poseurs, viciously exposed in Alan Sokal's and Jean Bricmont's sensational Impostures Intellectuelles of 1997. . . . Barthes enjoyed his success and was a supreme egotist. His friend Susan Sontag said his interest in you was really just your interest in him. He even published a review of his autobiography, titled Barthes on Barthes on Barthes. This dizzying self-reference defines the same popular culture that Barthes made respectable. Yet in his last book, the posthumous journal Incidents, he betrays a touching vulnerability. The book portrays a listless, melancholy figure. He describes wanting a glass of champagne at odd times of day while wandering Paris's streets. He dwells on his fear, and acceptance of, sexual rejection. With time to kill, he is anxious that a cup of coffee may not last more than 15 minutes. There is nothing to read in today's Le Monde. He fancies a Laotian boy he sees in a bar, but goes home instead to read Dante through a daze of migraine. One day in September 1979, he writes: 'I am paralyzed by the boredom of having to attend the opening of Pinter's No Man's Land.' . . . Re-read Barthes now and you realise that there was no great methodology, no "great theory". Rather, he makes his point through cumulative aphorism and shrewd observation. His achievement? To make us take The Simpsons seriously. As Professor Morris Zapp says in David Lodge's academic satire Small World, 'I'm a bit of a deconstructionist myself.' . . ." --http://www.3ammagazine.com/buzzwords/2002_dec.html [Oct 2005]
See also: Stephen Bayley - Roland Barthes
2005, Oct 01; 14:11 ::: Taste[F]aced with such comments, the “Man of Taste” was often busy trying to assert his norms as the norms. What we witness during the mid-century is an attempt to secure “the rules of taste” to the hands of the few. In Britain this capacity to judge was arrogated by, in addition to Hume, Edmund Burke, Gerard, Henry Home (Lord Kames) and in France by Voltaire and Jean d’Alembert, all of whom made serious attempts to define standards. For Hume, in particular, it had become necessary and, indeed, “natural […] to seek a Standard of Taste”; the resulting standard was, as Home writes in his “Standard of Taste” (1762), to be “applied to the taste of every individual”.
For some, instigating a standard was based upon establishing hierarchies of experience. Hume had earlier argued, in his 1741 essay “Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion”, that it was necessary to distinguish between what he called “a delicacy of passion” and the “delicacy of taste”, the former to be lamented, and the latter to be cultivated. Voltaire, in “An Essay on Taste” (1759), distinguished between “intellectual and sensual taste” in order to reach his standard, arguing that sensual taste aroused “relish only for those delicate and high seasoned dishes, in which all the refinements of art [...had] been employed to excite a forced sensation of pleasure” while intellectual taste showed “a want of relish for those beauties which [were] unaffected and natural”. For d’Alembert, also in 1759, establishing the same standard involved discriminating between “certain charms [...] which equally affect all observers [and] another species of beauty, which only affects [...] minds, that are possessed of a certain delicacy of feeling”. . --Charlotte Stevens, Loughborough University, first published 08 April 2005 via http://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1091 [Oct 2005]
See also: taste - Voltaire - 1700s
2005, Oct 01; 11:09 ::: New Grub Street (1891) - George Gissing
New Grub Street (1891) - George Gissing [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Review
The most impressive of Gissing?s books . . . England has produced very few better novelists. --George OrwellBook Description
New Grub Street (1891), George Gissing's most highly regarded novel, is the story of men and women forced to make their living by writing. Their daily lives and broken dreams, made and marred by the rigors of urban life and the demands of the fledgling mass communications industry, are presented with vivid realism and unsentimental sympathy. Its telling juxtaposition of the writing careers of the clever and malicious Jaspar Milvain and the honest and struggling Edward Reardon quickly made New Grub Street into a classic work of late Victorian fiction.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.New Grub Street is a novel by George Gissing published in 1891.
The story is about the literary world that Gissing inhabited, its intrigues, and its petty quarrels. The protagonist is one Jasper Milvain, a selfish and unscrupulous hack writer who rejects artistic endeavour for material gain. A number of more or less sympathetic literary characters — the artist, the poor scholar, the learned pedant — are contrasted to Milvain, but it is Milvain who triumphs at the end of the novel, showing that self-promotion is more useful in the world than artistic sensibility.
The themes of the novel are strongly autobiographical. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Grub_Street [Oct 2005]
2005, Oct 01; 09:48 ::: Les Temps Modernes (French magazine)
Les Temps Modernes (French magazine)
2005, Oct 01; 09:03 ::: "Must We Burn Sade?" (1952) - Simone de Beauvoir
"Must We Burn Sade?" - Simone de Beauvoir, edition shown: Gallimard (June 29, 1972)
"Faut-il brûler Sade?"(1952) - Simone de Beauvoir [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
See also: France - Sade - Simone de Beauvoir
Dès 1546, Charles-Quint fait dresser, par l’université de Louvain, le premier Catalogue des livres dangereux --http://www.ledilettante.com/index.php?menu=old_carte&id=27 [Oct 2005]
2005, Oct 01; 01:07 ::: Catalogue des livres dangereuxSee also: 1500s - Index Librorum Prohibitorum
2005, Oct 01; 01:03 ::: Almanach des demoiselles de Paris - 1700s
Almanach des demoiselles de Paris - 1700s [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Quatrième de couverture
Drôles, plus polissons qu'érotiques, fort bien troussés, deux almanachs des prostituées parisiennes sont ici réunis. Apparues sous la Révolution, ces " listes de filles " ont connu un vif succès jusqu'en 1829, date du " nettoyage " du Palais-Royal, fief des prostituées de la capitale. Les informations dont fourmillent ces textes - tarifs, portraits, talents particuliers, caractères, maladies - en font les premiers " guides roses " du plus vieux métier du monde. Leur ton badin, moqueur, voire malveillant est conforme à celui des libelles qui abondent pendant la période révolutionnaire. Dans ces almanachs, qui répondent aux passions politiques du moment, noblesse et clergé sont désignés comme les initiateurs et les grands bénéficiaires de cette lucrative activité.SDM
Guide rose des prostituées de Paris du 18e siècle, avec tarifs, portraits, talents, caractères et autres détails polissons. Une curiosité. --See also: guides roses - 1700s - list - prostitute
2005, Oct 01; 00:49 ::: Under the Influence presented by Super Furry Animals (2005)- Various Artists
Under the Influence presented by Super Furry Animals (2005)- Various Artists [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Track Listings
1. Beach Boys – Feel Flows 2. Undertones – My Perfect Cousin 3. Datblygu – Casserole Efeillaid 4. Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci – Christina 5. Sly And The Family Stone – Family Affair 6. Dawn Penn – You Don’t Love Me (No No No) 7. ELO – Telephone Lines 8. Dennis Wilson and Rumbo - Lady (Guto) 9. Meic Stevens – Ghost Town 10. MC5 – Kick Out The Jams 11. Bizet – Pearl Fishers 12. Underworld – Rez 13. Humanoid – Stakker Humanoid 14. Joey Beltram – Energy Flash 15. Hardfloor – AcperienceSee also: music - compilation
2005, Oct 01; 00:45 ::: LateNightTales (2005) - The Flaming Lips
LateNightTales (2005) - The Flaming Lips [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Track Listings
1. Unravel - Bjork 2. My Ship - Miles Davis 3. Speed Of Sound - Chris Bell 4. A Bit Of A Pain - Faust It's 5. 2HB - Roxy Music 6. People - Alfie 7. Flim - Aphex Twin 8. Galileo - Mice Parade 9. Up The Down Escalator - The Chameleons 10. Seven Nation Army - Flaming Lips (Exclusive Recording) 11. Playground For A Wedgeless Firm - The Chemical Brothers 12. Saudade - Love & Rockets 13. Monochrome - Lush 14. Sleep Comes Down - Psychedelic Furs 15. River Man - Nick Drake 16. On Fire - Sebadoh 17. Pyramid Song - Radiohead 18. I'm Not In Love - 10CC 19. Another Green World - Brian Eno 20. The Jist - David Shrigley (Exclusive Spoken Word Piece)See also: music - rock - Azuli Records - compilation
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