European Clocks and Watches in The Metropolitan Museum of Art


Book Description

Among the world's greatest technological and imaginative achievements is the invention and development of the timepiece. Examining for the first time The Metropolitan Museum of Art's unparalleled collection of European clocks and watches created from the late Renaissance through the nineteenth century, this fascinating book enriches our understanding of the origins and evolution of these ingenious works. It showcases fifty-four clocks, watches, and other timekeeping devices, each represented with an in-depth description and new photography of the exterior and the inner mechanisms. Among these masterpieces is an ornate sixteenth-century celestial timepiece that accurately predicts the trajectory of the sun, moon, and stars; an eighteenth-century longcase clock by David Roentgen that shows the time in the ten most important cities of the day; and a nineteenth-century watch featuring a penetrating portrait of Czar Nicholas I of Russia. Created by the best craftsmen in Austria, England, Flanders, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, these magnificent timepieces have been selected for their remarkable beauty and design, as well as their sophisticated mechanics. Built upon decades of expert research, this publication is a long-overdue survey of these stunning visual and technological marvels.




Time and Ways of Knowing Under Louis XIV


Book Description

This book is a study of the measurement and understanding of time in seventeenth-century Europe, particularly in France. Close readings of literary representations of time in Moliere, Mme de Sevigne, and Mmd de Lafayette are contextualized with historical studies of court life under Louis XIV, the restructuring of the early modern French postal system, and the emergencce of new practices of periodical publication, respectively. An epistemological backdrop for these historical and literary studies is provided by an introductory analysis of developments in the science of time measurement under Louis XIV. A concluding section places questions of human temporality in the contemporary context of global environmental concerns.




Encyclopedia of Time


Book Description

In this encyclopedia, some 200 international scholars in 360 articles explore subjects such as physics, archeostronomy, astronomy, mathematics, time's measurements and divisions, as well as covering other scientific and interdisciplinary areas: biology, economics and political science, horology, history, medicine, geography, geology and telecommunications.




The Oxford Handbook of the Baroque


Book Description

Few periods in history are so fundamentally contradictory as the Baroque, the culture flourishing from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries in Europe. When we hear the term âBaroque,â the first images that come to mind are symmetrically designed gardens in French chateaux, scenic fountains in Italian squares, and the vibrant rhythms of a harpsichord. Behind this commitment to rule, harmony, and rigid structure, however, the Baroque also embodies a deep fascination with wonder, excess, irrationality, and rebellion against order. The Oxford Handbook of the Baroque delves into this contradiction to provide a sweeping survey of the Baroque not only as a style but also as a historical, cultural, and intellectual concept. With its thirty-eight chapters edited by leading expert John D. Lyons, the Handbook explores different manifestations of Baroque culture, from theatricality in architecture and urbanism to opera and dance, from the role of water to innovations in fashion, from mechanistic philosophy and literature to the tension between religion and science. These discussions present the Baroque as a broad cultural phenomenon that arose in response to the enormous changes emerging from the sixteenth century: the division between Catholics and Protestants, the formation of nation-states and the growth of absolutist monarchies, the colonization of lands outside Europe and the mutual impact of European and non-European cultures. Technological developments such as the telescope and the microscope and even greater access to high-quality mirrors altered mankindâs view of the universe and of human identity itself. By exploring the Baroque in relation to these larger social upheavals, this Handbook reveals a fresh and surprisingly modern image of the Baroque as a powerful response to an epoch of crisis.




La montre française du XVIe siècle jusqu'à 1900


Book Description

Analyse: Chapitre sur le Neuchâtelois Abraham-Louis Breguet, p. 216-267.




Pasicrisie Internationale 1794-1900


Book Description

When the United Nations undertook the publication of the Reports of International Arbitral Awards, the 'Pasicrisie internationale' was identified as one of the rare truly general collections of international case law in existence. In fact, in deciding to publish the arbitration clauses and arbitral awards from 1794 to 1900, Henri La Fontaine was doing pioneering work, foreshadowing the famous Reports by half a century. As we near the end of the century, the 'Pasicrisie internationale' remains just as pertinent as it was when first published in 1902. This collection of arbitral awards, with its modest appearance, has certainly contributed more to the development of international arbitration case law than any number of lyrical speeches advocating peace through law. First edition printed in 1902 by Stämpfli, Bern. Lorsque l'Organisation des Nations Unies entreprit la publication de son Recueil des sentences arbitrales, elle identifia la Pasicrisie internationale comme constituant l'une des rares véritables collections générales de jurisprudence internationale préexistantes. De fait, en décidant de rassembler les clauses compromissoires et les sentences arbitrales de 1794 à1900, Henri La Fontaine avait fait oeuvre de pionnier et il préfigurait, avec un demi-siècle d'avance, le célèbre Recueil. En cette fin de siècle, la Pasicrisie internationale constitue donc un outil de travail toujours aussi actuel que lors de sa publication en 1902. Cette compilation de sentences arbitrales, d'apparence modeste, a certainement plus contribué au développement de la jurisprudence arbitrale internationale que bien des discours lyriques prônant la paix par le droit. Première édition imprimée en 1902 par Stämpfli, Berne.




Pasicrisie Internationale 1794-1900


Book Description

When the United Nations undertook the publication of the Reports of International Arbitral Awards, the `Pasicrisie internationale' was identified as one of the rare truly general collections of international case law in existence. In fact, in deciding to publish the arbitration clauses and arbitral awards from 1794 to 1900, Henri La Fontaine was doing pioneering work, foreshadowing the famous Reports by half a century. As we near the end of the century, the `Pasicrisie internationale' remains just as pertinent as it was when first published in 1902. This collection of arbitral awards, with its modest appearance, has certainly contributed more to the development of international arbitration case law than any number of lyrical speeches advocating peace through law. First edition printed in 1902 by Stämpfli, Bern. Lorsque l'Organisation des Nations Unies entreprit la publication de son Recueil des sentences arbitrales, elle identifia la Pasicrisie internationale comme constituant l'une des rares véritables collections générales de jurisprudence internationale préexistantes. De fait, en décidant de rassembler les clauses compromissoires et les sentences arbitrales de 1794 à1900, Henri La Fontaine avait fait oeuvre de pionnier et il préfigurait, avec un demi-siècle d'avance, le célèbre Recueil. En cette fin de siècle, la Pasicrisie internationale constitue donc un outil de travail toujours aussi actuel que lors de sa publication en 1902. Cette compilation de sentences arbitrales, d'apparence modeste, a certainement plus contribué au développement de la jurisprudence arbitrale internationale que bien des discours lyriques prônant la paix par le droit. Première édition imprimée en 1902 par Stämpfli, Berne.




Hysteria Complicated by Ecstasy


Book Description

A unique account of a peasant girl's mental illness in nineteenth-century France Hysteria Complicated by Ecstasy offers a rare window into the inner life of a person ordinarily inaccessible to historians: a semiliterate peasant girl who lived almost two centuries ago, in the aftermath of the French Revolution. Eighteen-year-old Nanette Leroux fell ill in 1822 with a variety of incapacitating nervous symptoms. Living near the spa at Aix-les-Bains, she became the charity patient of its medical director, Antoine Despine, who treated her with hydrotherapy and animal magnetism, as hypnosis was then called. Jan Goldstein translates, and provides a substantial introduction to, the previously unpublished manuscript recounting Nanette's strange illness—a manuscript coauthored by Despine and Alexandre Bertrand, the Paris physician who memorably diagnosed Nanette as suffering from "hysteria complicated by ecstasy." While hysteria would become a fashionable disease among urban women by the end of the nineteenth century, the case of Nanette Leroux differs sharply from this pattern in its early date and rural setting. Filled with intimate details about Nanette's behavior and extensive quotations of her utterances, the case is noteworthy for the sexual references that contemporaries did not recognize as such; for its focus on the difference between biological and social time; and for Nanette's fascination with the commodities available in the region's nascent marketplace. Goldstein's introduction brilliantly situates the text in its multiple contexts, examines it from the standpoint of early nineteenth-century medicine, and uses the insights of Foucault and Freud to craft a twenty-first-century interpretation. A compelling, multilayered account of one young woman's mental afflictions, Hysteria Complicated by Ecstasy is an extraordinary addition to the cultural and social history of psychiatry and medicine.







Le Champ littéraire 1860-1900


Book Description

Les textes qui constituent les vingt-neuf chapitres de ce volume ont été écrits en hommage à Michael Pakenham. Il s'agissait d'exprimer en peu de mots la diversité et la richesse des travaux de Michael Pakenham, de bien délimiter cette période de l'histoire littéraire française à la connaissance de laquelle ils ont tant contribué et, en même temps, d'ouvrir le plus d'horizons possibles. Le 'champ littéraire, 1860-1900', nous semblait le mieux signaler ce lieu où l'indécis au précis se joint. De plus, ce titre avait l'avantage de profiter -- sans scrupules d'ailleurs -- d'un terme que les travaux de Pierre Bourdieu ont mis en valeur, sans donner de consignes trop contraignantes quant à la manière de s'en servir. La première partie du volume s'ouvre sur des questions d'ordre théorique soulevées dans Les Règles de l'art. Genèse et structure du champ littéraire, (1992), mais, par la suite, s'élargit, prend du champ justement, pour s'aventurer dans des domaines où les recherches et l'enseignement de notre collègue ont tant porté le thème parisien, les rapports littérature-peinture, les poètes connus et moins connus, et enfin les chemins les plus divers de la littérature.