Papers by John Havard
Nineteenth-Century Literature, 2019
Lionel Verney, the eponymous "last man" of Mary Shelley's 1826 novel, commences his story from a ... more Lionel Verney, the eponymous "last man" of Mary Shelley's 1826 novel, commences his story from a geographically remote location: I am the native of a sea-surrounded nook, a cloud-enshadowed land, which, when the surface of the globe, with its shoreless ocean and trackless continents, presents itself to my mind, appears only as an inconsiderable speck in the immense whole; and yet, when balanced in the scale of mental power, far outweighed countries of larger extent and more numerous population. So true it is, that man's mind alone was the creator of all that was good or great to man, and that Nature herself was only his first minister. England, seated far north in the turbid sea, now visits my dreams in the semblance of a vast and well-manned ship, which mastered the winds and rode proudly over the waves. In my boyish days she was the universe to me. When I stood on my native hills, and saw plain and mountain stretch out to the utmost limits of my vision, speckled by the dwellings of my countrymen, and subdued to fertility by their labours, the earth's very
Contemporary Literature, 2017
The Byron Journal, 2021
This essay revisits the politics of Don Juan Canto I, taking cues from Byron's rejected portrait ... more This essay revisits the politics of Don Juan Canto I, taking cues from Byron's rejected portrait of Henry Brougham and his friendship with John Cam Hobhouse. Embarking on his career as an opposition politician, Hobhouse served as a foil to Byron; but for all his stern admonitions, his interventions and guidance were crucial to the future course of the poem. The cancelled 'Brougham stanzas' were overwhelmed by personal invective and scattershot critique. Guided by Hobhouse, Byron moved away from personal attacks of this nature, while expanding the poem's (encyclopedic) scope and honing its political purposes, including its satire of Tory authorities. While Hobhouse steered his way into power and became a member of the establishment he had once despised, Byron's poetry remains animated by contending political energies.
The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, 2019
Essay on Michel Foucault’s 1979–80 Lectures at the Collège de France for Foucault 13/13 Blog, Col... more Essay on Michel Foucault’s 1979–80 Lectures at the Collège de France for Foucault 13/13 Blog, Columbia University Law School, ed. Bernard Harcourt.
Essay on Michel Foucault’s 1980 and 19811 Lectures at the Collège de France and the School of Cri... more Essay on Michel Foucault’s 1980 and 19811 Lectures at the Collège de France and the School of Criminology at Louvain for Foucault 13/13 Blog, Columbia University Law School, ed. Bernard Harcourt.
Book Reviews by John Havard
Reviews 359 and modern Europe. Walker draws attention to the regularity with which many patrons o... more Reviews 359 and modern Europe. Walker draws attention to the regularity with which many patrons of elite and common prostitutes turned to rape and abuse in an attempt to wield power over their sexual charges, while D'Cruze emphasizes an aspect of sexual coupling that figures even in Kushner's study of eighteenth-century Paris: the line between consent and coercion is notoriously difficult to determine in historical contexts (448). though their subjects traverse an exceptionally wide topical range-from the family business of selling daughters into sex work in Enlightenment Paris, to the vicissitudes of aging madams, to the difficulties involved in writing the history of desired or diseased male and female bodies-the chapters in this collection acknowledge the centrality of human sexual experience to cultural history, as well as the inroads that historians have yet to make among scientific, satirical, and socioeconomic records of sex encounters. the more obscure archival sources that form the basis of Kushner's narrative appear in a fresh light-many of them for the first time-in meticulously detailed endnotes, which will most certainly inspire future scholars and students to pursue the as yet unknown sexual transactions documented in historical diaries, demimonde arrest records, and tales of allure and administrative unrest at the Paris opéra. the collection of essays curated by Lewis and Ellis is equally remarkable for the energy with which its authors pursue the cultural resonances of prostitution beyond the bedroom and the brothel, in contexts as diverse as the biographies of early modern Scandinavian women and the writings of Voltaire and Sade. the selected bibliography of The Routledge History of Sex and the Body includes studies of marriage, divorce, sartorial history, asexuality, the politics of motherhood, midwifery, and transvestism. At almost thirty pages in length, it will undoubtedly be an invaluable resource to researchers of sexuality, body image, and human relationships for years to come. the period surrounding the American revolution has long illuminated the varying scales and tempos of political activity, as well as the roles of ideas and deliberation in shaping political change. in their respective accounts of networked communication in the American colonies and the intellectual development of Edmund Burke in the years culminating with the American crisis, William Warner and David Bromwich present fresh optics on these questions that also illuminate patterns of information sharing and political debate in our own moment. Drawing upon deep engagement with generations of scholarship and careful scrutiny of
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Papers by John Havard
Book Reviews by John Havard