#1700s literature

[globalqueertexts]

“Your own self, not the East Wind, is your undoing”

Dream of the Red Chamber, Cao Xueqin

[prokopetz]

Today I found out that that alleged 18th Century woodcut of a woman saying "come out you bitch, I'll maul you" that's been doing the rounds is apparently 100% legitimate, and the reason nobody could source it is because the screenshot gets the title wrong. It's evidently from The new art and mystery of gossiping (the popularly circulated screenshot misspells "mystery" as "mastery"), and the full text is available here:

[escapismsworld]

The majestic Trevi Fountain

The Trevi Fountain, designed by Italian architect Nicola Salvi and completed by Giuseppe Pannini in 1762, is the largest Baroque fountain in Rome and one of the most famous fountains in the world.

[enlitment]

Which Underrated Woman from History are You?

Finally got around to making a uquiz featuring six of my favourite women from history! You can either get someone from the French Revolution, Roman Republic (I know, how unexpected!) or from 1700s/early 1800s.

Featuring scientists, writers, politically active icons and a few poets whose lives were intertwined with theirs, as a treat!

Enjoy and thanks everyone for sharing! ✨

[lifenconcepts]

Oh I’m utterly fascinated by how people of the past expressed the unexplainable through art and poetry, turning their turmoil from being alone and misunderstood into something beautiful that all may see.

Honestly a shame that people now just whine about not enough flags to represent them when at some point in the past many individuals would not even know how to justify what they were feeling nor find people alike, and to atleast find comfort in the solitude escaped through music and literature, fanaticising about worlds where such a thing was normalised or turning themselves into a beast, to share with the world the level of their inner workings.

[burningvelvet]

this is a reminder that you should all read tristram shandy (1759) by laurence sterne

[amphibimations]

In Wuthering Heights, outfits are not often described in much detail. After her stay at Thrushcross Grange, however, Cathy is described as wearing "a feathered beaver, a long cloth habit... a grand plaid silk frock, white trousers, ...burnished shoes... (and) gloves" When I first read that, I had no clue what a 'habit' or 'feathered beaver' was supposed to be. so I did some research. A riding habit is a dress women used to wear while riding horses. the 'feathered beaver' was probably a beaver fur hat with feathers. I decided that since I had looked into it so much, I may as well draw my own interpretation of the outfit! Here are some of the reference images I used while drawing this (1) (2) (3)

[diana-andraste]

Nuevo y curioso romance en que se declarán las virtudes del dia á lo divino

Spanish Chapbooks, c. 1700-1850

Source: cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk

[shewhoworshipscarlin]

Book binding, 1700s, Ottoman Empire, Turkey.

[haveyoureadthispoll]

This is Goethe's first novel, published in 1774. Written in diary form, it tells the tale of an unhappy, passionate young man hopelessly in love with Charlotte, the wife of a friend - a man who he alternately admires and detests. 'The Sorrows of Young Werther' became an important part of the 'Sturm und Drang movement, and greatly influenced later 'Romanticism'. The work is semi-autobiographical - in 1772, two years before the novel was published, Goethe had passed through a similar tempestuous period, when he lost his heart to Charlotte Buff, who was at that time engaged to his friend Johann Christian Kestner.

[empirearchives]

“I know my weakness: a too sincere awareness of the jaded human heart [although] . . . I still retain that enthusiasm which so often evaporates under a keen knowledge of men.”

— Napoleon Bonaparte, 1788

(Source)

[lifesarchive]

EYNHALLOW by TIM McGREGOR (REVIEW) 

quickly: a late 1700’s irish housewife has her humble island life disrupted by a strange and inimitable scientist from afar, dr. victor frankenstein: (anatomy as an art / unexpected arrivals and departures / empty graves and ocean caves / heartbreaking decision making  / ghosts are just faded memories / mysteries of midwifery / medical malpractice / overly tall people need love too / ogres, trolls, and monsters on the beach / sad sex with your drunk husband vs. empowering sex with a stranger / secrets in a locked room / stories of abandonment / sea salt and stone / telling your true love goodbye / true grief never dies / waiting on lost lovers by the sea).

Meet the overly tall, overly compassionate Agnes. Her father made her denounce her true love because he was poor. Then her evil stepmother orchestrated her marriage to an old man because ‘no one likes overly tall women’. That is how the young Agnes came to be Mrs. Tulloch, the island housewife of the drunkard idiot Mr. Tulloch, who spends his either time beating and berating Agnes, or trying to spoil her with more children.

Island life is hard. The wind blows cold, so Agnes keeps the hearth fire burning. Meals are often meager, but Agnes keeps the pot full (with four children and an oaf of a husband, mind you). She goes to church on Sunday, and she tends to her pregnant best friend Katie when she has the time. Her skill for keeping houses warm and fed (as well as being the only woman on the island not pregnant or elderly) makes her the prime candidate as a temporary cook for the strange new scientist conducting odd experiments on the island. One bowl of stew leads to another, and soon Mrs. Tulloch is entangled in the dark world of Dr. Frankenstein’s experiments.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ Delightful!

This was such a DELIGHTFUL well-paced period-piece horror story, at only 174 pages, with overtones of romance, sci-fi, and mystery. It was part fable, part wormhole transporting me to a misty brackish island at a time and place far out of reach. Not to mention, the writing was full of charming 1700's-1800's slang. Agnes, our kind host, is warm and benevolent, reminiscent of the Beloved Piranesi. Unlike Piranesi however, her curtailment by men’s expectations will reach its limits. Her wrath will be the result of an irreversible change in her compassionate nature, and it will lead to irreversible changes to the island community itself.

[electricabsolution]

twin mirror selves of seeing: an essay (?) about sharkboy and lavagirl

this has been taking up a lot of valuable space in my brain for at least 3 years so im writing it down. no i dont remember most of this movie but ive decided im qualified to talk about it anyway.

everyone knows Sharkboy and Lavagirl. come on. right? George Lopez and that guy from twilight? the CGI is fucking abysmal but it was everything to 10 year old me. rivaled perhaps only by spy kids. i have many thoughts about it.

LONG POST. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

[the title is from the poem If Man Is Dead, Then God Is Slain by Ray Bradbury.]

i don’t really feel like summarizing the movie because i’m not focused on the plot. the gist of it is, max dreams up shit and it comes to life. he makes a cool planet just for kids, but oh no! his class bully Linus fucks it all up and he has to travel to planet drool and make it all better.

this isnt an essay really. more of a collection of thoughts because? ??? what the actual fuck is this movie. moving on.

max as the author ≠ max as the god

ok, max is a lonely and aimless kid. to him, real life is the Adult's World. hes out of place, so in his dreams (and daydreams) he makes up friends. friends with superpowers. normal kid stuff. they live on planet drool, basically a paradise for kids. but when dreams become reality, so do all of its flaws. because a god can only create in it's own image, sharkboy and lavagirl are equally as purposeless as max is. sharkboy grieves his dad and lavagirl longs to be around people without scalding them. They both feel uniquely isolated (which they are. main character syndrome) and take it out on max because he caused these problems by making them exist.

this concept is par for the course regarding the morality of authorship. to create a story is to have your characters suffer; little playthings with no say. naturally, sharkboy and lavagirl don’t like this. but i doubt this even occurred to max before they brought it up, considering he didn’t actually create them to Exist in a narrative. more on this later.

on the topic of gods, the biblical themes in this movie are pretty heavy handed, honestly. what with max's bible - the dream journal - and his very own adam and eve in the form of cool older kids with shark and lava powers which are like definitively two of the sickest things for a preteen. his Eden is corrupted, though (as Edens are wont to do), and therein lies the beginning of the story. the line between creator and author begins to blur.

the dream journal

The dream journal is the wellspring. its easily the most important part of the movie to me. its the fount of Max's power.... for a time. everything he's dreamed has been recorded in the bible. There's one scene where Max reads aloud that he once dreamed that Lavagirl had a motorcycle, and instantly it comes into being. But... didn't it exist before he read it? He wrote it down, didn't he? This scene shows us just how godlike Max really is - he needs to be believed in. At least here, interacting with his creations, ideas just existing in his head are functionally useless. Well, more specifically, existing to a singular being rather than many. the act of reading the journal to Lavagirl* is what causes the words to exist, a conjoining of consciousness i guess.

In this case, we have to assume nothing in his dream journal exists without a second party to believe in it. which makes sense.

but then they lament that max forgot to write down a full gas tank... and the bike becomes useless. Lavagirl accidentally takes the dream journal, and destroys it. (de-storys it, to borrow the phrase from that one tumblr post.) this is to show that his control of the universe comes from the writing, i guess? the act of putting to page is the power, and the next act of speaking the words makes the power real. this is why it's interesting to me that the movie itself opens on a monologue about sharkboy and lavagirl themselves. Max is reading from his journal to us, the fourth wall*, thus the characters come into being because we believe it.

max as the child

yes, he is the Dreamer or whatever the fuck and created a whole planet, but it was only because he felt so alone. he is still a kid. behind the dream journal, he just wanted friends. people who saw him. It's clear from the beginning of the movie he was bullied and we didn't see any friends to speak of. and his parents, well. your average fraught relationship. There isn't much to talk about regarding their scenes except (!) how they're portrayed on planet drool.

in the land of milk and cookies, literally a childish, comforting place, his parents, two giants, roam the area. their size indicates how max feels: small and hardly noticeable. but this is Max's dream world. exactly what he wants. his parents are madly in love and perfectly content. counter this to real life, where they don't notice max because they're too busy arguing. here, they're too lovey-dovey. but even in his garden of eden, he's still not... a part of their life. he's just too small. i dont even think max has conceptualized this because its so normal to him - and probably the way a lot of kids feel in real life, like being detached from the unified front of their parents. its actually really sad to think about, poor kid :c

linus as the author; max as the god

so it turns out that the corruption spreading through planet drool is due to the influence of linus graffitiing the dream journal.

so i mentioned previously that max's dreams don't exist until there's someone to believe. once that motorbike scene happens, it recontextualizes a fair bit of the story. so… when, exactly, did planet drool come into being? was it just out there somewhere in space ever since max had the first inkling? i doubt it.

i believe that it was Linus who really created planet drool. he stole the journal. thus, by reading, it came into being. in-universe and in, um… our universe. real life i mean. he's an active, hostile audience as opposed to the viewer who is utterly passive. he defaced what was a private sanctuary of one person’s mind both literally (editing the story) and figuratively (creating conflict creates narrative. it isn’t private anymore. it’s worthy of an audience, now.)

by doing this, though, it's Linus who gives the power to max. he’s the reason Sharkboy and Lavagirl come down to get him. like, he believes in max and his stories just to be a hater about it. respect??

i’m unsure what to make of linus having powers too, though. maybe it’s the fact that he wrote in the dream journal and even though he messed it all up, believers (i.e sharkboy and lavagirl, plus linus to some extent.*) can’t pick and choose what to believe in. it’s all or nothing. or maybe it’s supposed to be a kid thing, like anyone can make their dreams real but you grow out of it as you become a boring adult. that was probably the message.

anyway, all this is to say that if max is the Dreamer, this makes linus the Actor. the Enactor. (the subtractor. because… minus. get it?? ok sorry.) to return to the title quote (which is more explicitly applicable to sharkboy and lavagirl, but i digress), linus and max are mirrors of seeing. seeing=reading=existing. max creates the world, linus makes it real. yes, there is a difference.

i don’t think planet drool ever existed in its perfect state because it didn’t need to. any memories of it were created by the narrative, the bible / the journal, to give our protagonists a goal to work towards. getting the planet back to ‘how it used to be’ is easy for them to understand because there’s a clear divide between how max writes in the journal and how linus does. erasing his scripture is to erase all problems, and fade back into irrelevance (for all but max). the author-slash-editor has been defeated and the characters can go back to existing in the utopia of Max's mind. there might be a discussion to be had regarding the purity of non-existence, and once it becomes real it’s tainted. hmm.

*[all this talk of gods and authors and i've neglected to discuss the believers. its a bit scattered, theres the max–SB+LG relationship, max+linus–viewer relationship (which parallel each other), and the max-linus relationship. not very important, just notable. I just wanted to asterisk certain places because I wonder if those people are just extensions of the viewer at that point in time. the first time he ever reads the journal, it's to us. so, maybe, when i said the motorbike became real because he read it to lavagirl, it was still just us? maybe im just being overly literal. i mean of course it's us.]

not sure what all this means in the end, though. from this perspective, the author (linus) and the god (max) are evil and good respectively despite doing basically the same thing. but i guess it's the intent that's important - max, the god, had innocent intentions. he wanted his planet and Sharkboy and Lavagirl to be happy, it's just that by creating them at all he imparted his anxieties onto them. Linus, the author, had ill intent, creating secondary problems on purpose. the desire to share ideas, to have it exist in many minds, is what seems to be the issue.

they grapple for ownership over the universe but of course Linus can't win, he merely wants it. Max needs it. Max is it.

And which is God, which Human, God now must truly say: We fly much like each other, We walk a common clay. I dreamed Man into being, He dreams me now to stay - Twin mirror selves of seeing, We live Forever's Day.

[enlitment]

In case you're wondering like I was: the reason why a lot of the 18th-century philosophers can't seem to stop making Cato the Younger references (Voltaire talks about Cato at least 6 or 7 times in Letters on England which is a lot because it's by no means a long text. Mandeville too of course — hi bestie!)

is because there was a play in the early 1700s about Cato (Addison's Cato, a Tragedy to be precise) which seemed to have had the cultural impact of early seasons of Game of Thrones

Catoo! this actor is from an 1800s production but still. Look at that facial expression. The sad wet cat energy. The pain in his eyes. It's all there!

Oh, and by 'cultural impact of Game of Thrones' I don't mean an increase in theatre subscriptions or of Cato action figures sales (though that would have been awesome!)

I mean it had a pretty significant influence on many of the American Revolutionaries (and French too most likely, since, cultural osmosis and all that). A lot of these nerds sure loved to quote it!

[pasaime]

⠀⠀© 𝒑asaime ... a roleplaying blog of louis manoir ― a briefly mentioned character from the 1818 novel frankenstein by mary w shelley. 1818/1823 edition strictly, may have musical elements. dni vicliza/vicreature. original collaborative frankenstein spin off written by three mad-women titled "forgotten man's symphony". run by charlotte (she/they/any | 18). most interactions will be set in the 1790s to early 1800s. manoir will only be shipped with three specific characters if needed, first two characters being unrequited love: victor frankenstein, henry clerval, and florian wiśniowski. established 13/01/24. 16+ only. any plotting will most likely happen with me and one other FMS writer, plotting as a three expected, but you will only be writing with me specifically. thank you for reading.

trigger warnings & content warnings: grooming, age gap (non-romanticised), 1700s period-typical homophobia, suicide attempts & thoughts, physical abuse, toxic relationships/obsessive love, self-hatred, body image issues, cannon-typical deaths, cannon-typical incest (non-romanticised), pregnancy, child neglect. interact with caution.

1 ) carrd. 2 ) prompts. 3 ) spotify. 4 ) tracker.

[burningvelvet]

long book title enjoyers, have i got the man for you... (found this while reading the wiki page of john dunton, writer & bookseller who pioneered periodicals in the 17th-18th centuries).