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The Spirit of Despotism
How was the social and cultural life of Britain affected by the fear that the French Revolution would spread across the channel? In this brilliant, engagingly written, and profusely illustrated book, John Barrell, well-known for his studies of the history, literature, and art of the period, argues that the conflict between the ancien regime in Britain and the emerging democratic movement was so fundamental that it could not be contained within what had previously beenthought of as the 'normal' arena of politics. Activities and spaces which had previously been regarded as 'outside' politics suddenly no longer seemed to be so, and the fear of revolution produced a culture of surveillance and s...
Imagining the King's Death
It is high treason in British law to imagine the king's death. But after the execution of Louis XVI in 1793, everyone in Britain must have found themselves imagining that the same fate might befall George III. How easy was it to distinguish between fantasising about the death of George and imagining it, in the legal sense of intending or designing? John Barrell examines this question in the context of the political trials of the mid-1790s and the controversies they generated. He shows how the law of treason was adapted in the years following Louis's death to punish what was acknowledged to be a "modern" form of treason unheard of when the law had been framed. The result, he argues, was the invention of a new and imaginary reading, a "figurative" treason, by which the question of who was imagining the king's death, the supposed traitors or those who charged them with treason, became inseparable.
The Political Theory of Painting from Reynolds to Hazlitt
What is the function of painting in a commercial society? This text describes how British artists of the late-18th and early-19th centuries attempted to answer this question.
The Dark Side of the Landscape
The eighteenth-century saw a radical change in the depiction of country life in English painting: feeling less constrained by the conventions of classical or theatrical pastoral, landscape painters attempted to offer a portrayal of what life was really like, or was thought to be like, in England; and this inevitably involved a distinct approach to the depiction of the rural poor. John Barrell's influential 1980 study shows why the poor began to be of such interest to painters, and examines the ways in which they could be represented so as to be an acceptable part of the décor of the salons of the rich. His discussion focuses on the work of three painters: Thomas Gainsborough, George Morland and John Constable. Throughout the book, Barrell draws illuminating comparisons with the literature of rural life and with the work of other painters. His terse and vigourous account has provided a landmark for social historians and literary critics, as well as historians of art.
Absorption and Theatricality
With this widely acclaimed work, Michael Fried revised the way in which eighteenth-century French painting and criticism are viewed and understood. Analyzing paintings produced between 1753 and 1781 and the comments of a number of critics who wrote about them, especially Dennis Diderot, Fried discovers a new emphasis in the art of the time, based not on subject matter or style but on values and effects.
Edward Pugh of Ruthin 1763-1813
Born in Ruthin, Denbighshire, Edward Pugh (1763-1813) was a Welsh-speaking artist and writer who worked as a miniaturist in London, exhibiting frequently at the Royal Academy. But Pugh's passion was the landscape, and he painted remarkable views of North Wales that not only captivate but also reveal the development of the Welsh economy and Welsh national consciousness. Pugh also wrote and illustrated a fascinating, informative, and humorous account of a tour of North Wales around 1800--one of the only travel books written at that time by someone who could actually converse with the inhabitants. Edward Pugh of Ruthin 1763-1813 is the first book to consider the work of this nearly forgotten We...
The Infection of Thomas De Quincey
Thomas De Quincey, best known for his book Confessions of an English Opium Eater, was a journalist and propagandist of Empire, of oriental aggression, and of racial paranoia. The greater part of the fourteen volumes of his collected writings concerns the history, the colonial development, and increasingly the threat presented by the Orient in all its manifestations--human, animal, and microbiological. This remarkable book, which is an account of De Quincey's fears of all things oriental, is also an extraordinary analysis of the psychopathology of mid-Victorian imperialist culture. John Barrell paints a picture of De Quincey as a happy family man, apparently at ease with himself and with the ...
The Birth of Pandora and the Division of Knowledge
This book brings together many of John Barrell's essays - some written especially for this volume - on the history and politics of culture in eighteenth-century Britain. It addresses a wide range of cultural practices - painting, sculpture, poetry, the law, the division of labour - discussing them in relation to such issues as sexuality, the body and representation and the distinction between public and private. The Birth of Pandora will interest all those involved with or interested in cultural history and cultural studies.
The First English Detectives
This is the first comprehensive study of the Bow Street Runners, a group of men established in the middle of the eighteenth century by Henry Fielding to confront violent offenders on the streets and highways around London.
