Thomas Jefferson in Paris: The Ministry of a Virginian “Looker-on”
Thomas Jefferson in Paris: The Ministry of a Virginian “Looker-on”

Author: M. Andrew Holowchak

Publisher: Vernon Press

Published: 2022-09-20

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1648895263

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Jefferson’s years in France as minister plenipotentiary were a time of large edification. He approached his ministry as a “looker on”: Jefferson, while in France, always kept a critical distance from events, so that he could measure and critically examine them from the perspective of a dispassionate natural philosopher. Being dispassionate, Jefferson was pulled into events only insofar as circumstances required him to do so. Yet his “adventures” from his critical distance (e.g., his trip to London to meet the king, his ventures in the salons of Paris, and his travels through Southern France, Northern Italy, the Rhineland, and the Netherlands) were many, and varied. He even, at times, lost his critical, looker-on perspective from distance as he allowed himself to become immersed in events, as in the case of his relationship with lovely Italian artist and musician Maria Cosway.... > This book is a portal into the mind of Thomas Jefferson, as looker-on, during his tenure in Paris. Why was Jefferson so eager to accept the ministry to Paris? What was his impression of the great city and its people while he stayed? What lessons, while in Paris, did he learn which he could transport to Virginia and his country? Those and other questions Holowchak aims to answer in this book.

Thomas Jefferson in Paris: the Ministry of a Virginian Looker-On
Thomas Jefferson in Paris: the Ministry of a Virginian Looker-On

Author: M. Andrew Holowchak

Publisher: Vernon Press

Published: 2022-07-26

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781648894732

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Jefferson's years in France as minister plenipotentiary were a time of large edification. He approached his ministry as a "looker on" Jefferson, while in France, always kept a critical distance from events, so that he could measure and critically examine them from the perspective of a dispassionate natural philosopher. Being dispassionate, Jefferson was pulled into events only insofar as circumstances required him to do so. Yet his "adventures" from his critical distance (e.g., his trip to London to meet the king, his ventures in the salons of Paris, and his travels through Southern France, Northern Italy, the Rhineland, and the Netherlands) were many, and varied. He even, at times, lost his critical, looker-on perspective from distance as he allowed himself to become immersed in events, as in the case of his relationship with lovely Italian artist and musician Maria Cosway. This book is a portal into the mind of Thomas Jefferson, as looker-on, during his tenure in Paris. Why was Jefferson so eager to accept the ministry to Paris? What was his impression of the great city and its people while he stayed? What lessons, while in Paris, did he learn which he could transport to Virginia and his country? Those and other questions Holowchak aims to answer in this book.

The Disease of Liberty
The Disease of Liberty

Author: M. Andrew Holowchak

Publisher: Vernon Press

Published: 2024-04-16

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 164889884X

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Liberty for Jefferson was 'the' driving force of human history and a realizable state of the human organism and of a society of men. Study of history and anthropology showed that humans were moving from the barbaric independence suffered in primal hordes, which lived inefficiently on lands, to a more economical, human-friendly use of land in social settings, demanding laws for order. Those laws, historically, favored the powerful few to the detriment of the hoi polloi. As a pupil of the Enlightenment, Jefferson argued that all humans were by nature equal, and thus, deserving of as much civic liberty as a reason-oriented and sciences-loving society, a Jeffersonian republic, could guarantee them. This book, philosophical, explains how such a society was possible, given Jefferson’s conception of the nature of man, and how the realization of one such society could lead, through contagion, to a global community of such societies. There are a large number of books that cover Jefferson’s political ideology (e.g., Gordon Wood’s 'Empire of Liberty' and Adrienne Koch’s 'The Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson')—too many to limn—but none that gets at the philosophical implications of TJ’s views on liberty. This book, examining TJ as a natural scientist and philosophy, examines and situates him in the manner of other great political ideologists of his day—e.g., Hume and Kant.

Thomas Jefferson and Maria Cosway: A Gordian Love Affair
Thomas Jefferson and Maria Cosway: A Gordian Love Affair

Author: M. Andrew Holowchak

Publisher: Vernon Press

Published: 2024-04-16

Total Pages: 156

ISBN-13: 1648898637

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This is the only book to offer the complete correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and Maria Cosway, a talented artist for whom Jefferson fell while in France. There is agreement in the secondary literature that Jefferson’s affection for Hemings was reciprocated. This book shows that that cannot be believed. Holowchak also shows that Hemings, through letters late in life, much longs for Jefferson’s company, suggestive of regret for not having earlier in life reciprocated Jefferson’s feelings—hence, the importance of a book with the complete correspondence. Holowchak also offers in the introduction a short psychobiography of Cosway that shows the significance of key early-life events—e.g., her childhood in a tavern, her removal to a convent, her introduction to art, and two singular dreams. Cosway would ever be tugged antipodally by the lure of earthy living as well as the asceticism of Catholic piety.

The Architecture of Influence
The Architecture of Influence

Author: Amanda Reeser Lawrence

Publisher: University of Virginia Press

Published: 2023-11-21

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 0813950597

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How do we create the new from the old? The Architecture of Influence explores this fundamental question by analyzing a broad swath of twentieth-century architectural works—including some of the best-known examples of the architectural canon, modern and postmodern—through the lens of influence. The book serves as both a critique of the discipline’s long-standing focus on "genius" and a celebration of the creative act of revisioning and reimagining the past. It argues that all works of architecture not only depend on the past but necessarily alter, rewrite, and reposition the traditions and ideas to which they refer. Organized into seven chapters—Replicas, Copies, Compilations, Generalizations, Revivals, Emulations, and Self-Repetitions—the book redefines influence as an active process through which the past is defined, recalled, and subsequently redefined within twentieth-century architecture.

Life and Opinions of Julius Melbourn
Life and Opinions of Julius Melbourn

Author: Julius Melbourn

Publisher:

Published: 1847

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13:

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"Jabez Delano Hammond published The Life and Opinions of Julius Melbourn in 1847, amid state debates over black suffrage and national debates over slavery’s expansion. The white New Yorker wrote in the voice of a former slave, fooling some contemporaries and subsequent historians, seeking to link Thomas Jefferson’s legacy to antislavery and racial equality. Placed in the context of Hammond’s other public and private writings, Julius Melbourn represents the evolution, radicalization, and politicization of the antebellum abolition movement. Hammond began as an ardent Jeffersonian but came to advocate violence against the Slave Power before disavowing such tactics in favor of political mobilization before his death in 1855"--Abstract, "Jefferson's legacy, race science, and righteous violence in Jabez Hammond's abolitionist fiction."