Thesis ID: CBB001562116

Polite Sociability and Levantine Archaeology in the British Enlightenment: The Society of Dilettanti, 1732--1786 (2004)

unapi

Kelly, Jason M. (Author)


University of California, Santa Barbara
Guerrini, Anita


Publication Date: 2004
Edition Details: Advisor: Guerrini, Anita
Physical Details: 320 pp.
Language: English

This dissertation is an analysis of one of the most important social organizations of eighteenth-century Britain, the Society of Dilettanti, and it emphasizes the close relationship between the loci and practices of public sphere sociability and archaeological debates about the ancient and modern civilizations of the Eastern Mediterranean. The Dilettanti formed in London in 1732 as a private dining society for men who had met each other on the Grand Tour, but the public quickly began to recognize the ribald excesses of many of the society's members. Hoping to improve their reputation, the Dilettanti began sending archaeological expeditions to the Ottoman Empire in 1752. The group claimed their researches contributed to public science because they collected and interpreted their data according to principles of natural philosophy. However, their work also focused on exploring cultural difference. The resulting archaeological and ethnographic publications scrutinized Turkish and Greek society according to British standards of polite sociability, a central element of the ideal public sphere. In showing that there was no substantive disjunction between the vocabularies of polite sociability and Levantine archaeology, this dissertation bridges the gap between two divergent trends in British historiography, the first which explores the theories and practices of social identity in the Habermasian public sphere and the second which explores identity in relation to various modern "orientalisms."

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Description Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 65/01 (2004): 260. UMI pub. no. 3120364.


Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001562116/

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Authors & Contributors
Standley, Eleanor R.
Enza Del Tedesco
Withers, Charles W. J.
Wallis, Peter
Skouen, Tina
Scott, Sarah
Concepts
Science and society
Societies; institutions; academies
Archaeology
Museums
Medicine
Public understanding of science
Time Periods
18th century
20th century
19th century
20th century, early
21st century
17th century
Places
Great Britain
Bath (England)
England
Italy
France
Venice (Italy)
Institutions
Royal Society of London
Oxford University
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Pitt Rivers Museum (University of Oxford)
Natural History Museum (London, England)
Royal Institution of Great Britain
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