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According to Carlo Ginzburg, culture is not only the scholars’ knowledge, but it is also made of all the mixture of a population attitudes, beliefs and behaviours. In this sense, objects are one of the culture’s main expressions. Using materiality as a key, the volume analyses the history of the Neapolitan society during the Eighteenth century in some of its multiple articulations: aristocracy, law men, middle class, lower class. The idea of defining the strata of the ancien regime society is now considered unfeasible, partly because the criteria of definition and legitimation were multiple and different at the time: legal certifications, occupation, geographical origin, wealth. In this complicated universe, owning specific goods was part of the process of definition of the individual affiliation to a group, in terms of having a similar life style, as well as adopting the same ideals. The objects, inherited and annotated into inventories, useful to understand this phaenomenon, were not only precious dresses and jewels, but also iron spoons, lead cruxes, or glass beads. Despite their physical features, the value of these goods was not just economic; it stands also in the symbolic meaning they carried. La cultura, come ha affermato Carlo Ginzburg, non è solo la sapienza dei dotti, ma anche quel «complesso di atteggiamenti, credenze, codici di comportamento» che caratterizza una popolazione. Una delle sue espressioni fondamentali è costituita dagli oggetti. Utilizzando la materialità come chiave di accesso, il volume indaga la storia della società napoletana durante il Settecento in alcune delle sue molteplici articolazioni: aristocrazia, togati, ceto medio e popolo. L’idea di definire con precisione le componenti della società di antico regime si è ormai dimostrata utopistica, anche perché i criteri di definizione e di legittimazione erano allora molteplici e variegati: attestazioni giuridiche, occupazione, provenienza geografica, potere economico. In questo complicato universo, il possesso di specifici beni costituiva un elemento importante nel definire l’appartenenza degli individui a un gruppo, in quanto assunzione di un comune stile di vita, ma soprattutto in quanto condivisione di elementi ideali. Le ricchezze da cui è possibile cogliere queste dinamiche socio-culturali, lasciate in eredità e annotate negli inventari, non erano solo costituite da sontuosi gioielli o abiti sfarzosi; potevano essere anche cucchiai di ferro, crocifissi di piombo o perle di vetro colorato. Eppure, quali che fossero le loro caratteristiche, gli oggetti non avevano solo un valore economico, ma erano anche portatori di significati simbolici.

Material Culture --- Naples --- Social History --- Eighteenth Century --- Inventories

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"With contributions from historians, literary critics, and geographers, Curious Encounters uncovers a rich history of global voyaging, collecting, and scientific exploration in the long eighteenth century. Leaving behind grand narratives of discovery, these essays collectively restore a degree of symmetry and contingency to our understanding of encounters between European and Indigenous people. To do this the essays consider diverse agents of historical change, both human and inanimate: commodities, curiosities, texts, animals, and specimens moved through their own global circuits of knowledge and power. The voyages and collections rediscovered here do not move from a European center to a distant periphery, nor do they position European authorities as the central agents of this early era of globalization. Long distance voyagers from Greenland to the Ottoman Empire crossed paths with French, British, Polynesian, and Spanish travelers across the world, trading objects and knowledge for diverse ends. The dynamic contact zones of these curious encounters include the ice floes of the Arctic, the sociable spaces of the tea table, the hybrid material texts and objects in imperial archives, and the collections belonging to key figures of the Enlightenment, including Sir Hans Sloane and James Petiver."--

Civilization, Modern --- Civilization, Western --- Eighteenth century --- collecting. --- eighteenth-century. --- empire. --- exploration. --- history of science. --- history. --- indigenous encounters. --- travel. --- writing.

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Eighteenth century --- Civilization, Modern --- Literature, Modern --- Civilization, Modern. --- Eighteenth century. --- Literature, Modern. --- 1700-1799 --- Modern literature --- 18th century --- Modern civilization --- Modernity --- Arts, Modern --- Civilization --- Renaissance --- History --- History and criticism

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This collection of essays studies the encounter between allegedly ahistorical concepts of narrative and eighteenth-century literature from across Europe. At issue is the question of whether the theoretical concepts underpinning narratology are, despite their appearance of ahistorical generality, actually derived from the historical study of a particular period and type of literature. The essays take on aspects of eighteenth-century texts such as plot, genre, character, perspective, temporality, and more, coming at them from both a narratological and a historical perspective.

European prose literature --- European fiction --- Narration (Rhetoric) --- History and criticism. --- History --- eighteenth-century literature. --- historical narratology. --- narrative theory. --- Anthologies.

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This open access book seeks to explain how the literary commentary of the Lives of the Poets speaks to us today because of its ethical goals. Edward Tomarken elucidates this element of Johnson's literary criticism by using Ralph Cohen's genre method, the topic of Chapter One, "Why Genre". Chapters two to five address the most prevalent genres of the Lives: tragedy, metaphysical poetry, the epic, the pastoral elegy, and the mock epic. Chapter six considers the rise of literary criticism as a genre. Chapter Seven demonstrates how ethical genre criticism relates literature to life. And the final chapter explains why, although Johnson considers 'moral' and 'ethical' as nearly interchangeable terms, Tomarken prefers 'ethical' because it relates genre criticism to present problems in literary and non-literary worlds.

Literature --- Literature, Modern --- Literary form. --- Literary Criticism. --- Eighteenth-Century Literature. --- Literary Genre. --- History and criticism. --- 18th century.