Plunder and Pleasure

Plunder and Pleasure

Author: Max Put

Publisher: Hotei Publishing

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13:

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Plunder and pleasure is the first book of its kind to provide an in-depth study of the role played by dealers and collectors of art in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the Western craze for East Asian art was at its peak. The book comprises an overview of Japonisme and the translation into English of two important French texts detailing the trade in Asian art at this time: Notes d'un Bibeloteur au Japon by the art dealer Philippe Sichel (1839/40-99) and Souvenirs d'un vieil Amateur d'Art de l'Extrême-Orient by the collector Raymond Koechlin (1860-1931). Both translations are extensively annotated. A discussion of the content and significance of the translations as well as short biographical sketches of Sichel and Koechlin are also included. Plunder and Pleasure casts new light on the subject of Western tastes for East Asian art during this period and furthers our understanding of the cultural relations between the Far East and the West that were going on at this time.


Sacred Plunder

Sacred Plunder

Author: David M. Perry

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2015-06-18

Total Pages: 341

ISBN-13: 0271066830

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In Sacred Plunder, David Perry argues that plundered relics, and narratives about them, played a central role in shaping the memorial legacy of the Fourth Crusade and the development of Venice’s civic identity in the thirteenth century. After the Fourth Crusade ended in 1204, the disputes over the memory and meaning of the conquest began. Many crusaders faced accusations of impiety, sacrilege, violence, and theft. In their own defense, they produced hagiographical narratives about the movement of relics—a medieval genre called translatio—that restated their own versions of events and shaped the memory of the crusade. The recipients of relics commissioned these unique texts in order to exempt both the objects and the people involved with their theft from broader scrutiny or criticism. Perry further demonstrates how these narratives became a focal point for cultural transformation and an argument for the creation of the new Venetian empire as the city moved from an era of mercantile expansion to one of imperial conquest in the thirteenth century.


A Dictionary of Sexual Language and Imagery in Shakespearean and Stuart Literature

A Dictionary of Sexual Language and Imagery in Shakespearean and Stuart Literature

Author: Gordon Williams

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2001-09-13

Total Pages: 1650

ISBN-13: 0485113937

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Providing an alphabetical listing of sexual language and locution in 16th and 17th-century English, this book draws especially on the more immediate literary modes: the theatre, broadside ballads, newsbooks and pamphlets. The aim is to assist the reader of Shakespearean and Stuart literature to identify metaphors and elucidate meanings; and more broadly, to chart, through illustrative quotation, shifting and recurrent linguistic patterns. Linguistic habit is closely bound up with the ideas and assumptions of a period, and the figurative language of sexuality across this period is highly illuminating of socio-cultural change as well as linguistic development. Thus the entries offer as much to those concerned with social history and the history of ideas as to the reader of Shakespeare or Dryden.


A Home of the Humanities

A Home of the Humanities

Author: James N. Carder

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 9780884023654

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Mildred and Robert Woods Bliss were consummate collectors and patrons. The illustrated essays in this volume reveal how the Blisses' wide-ranging interests in art, music, gardens, architecture, and interior design resulted in the creation of the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection--what they came to call their "home of the humanities."


Plunder Squad

Plunder Squad

Author: Richard Stark

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2010-09-15

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 0226772918

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“Hearing the click behind him, Parker threw his glass straight back over his right shoulder, and dove off his chair to the left.” When a job looks like amateur hour, Parker walks away. But even a squad of seasoned professionals can’t guarantee against human error in a high-risk scam. Can an art dealer with issues unload a truck of paintings with Parker’s aid? Or will the heist end up too much of a human interest story, as luck runs out before Parker can get in on the score?


The Compensations of Plunder

The Compensations of Plunder

Author: Justin M. Jacobs

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2020-07-06

Total Pages: 357

ISBN-13: 022671201X

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From the 1790s until World War I, Western museums filled their shelves with art and antiquities from around the world. These objects are now widely regarded as stolen from their countries of origin, and demands for their repatriation grow louder by the day. In The Compensations of Plunder, Justin M. Jacobs brings to light the historical context of the exodus of cultural treasures from northwestern China. Based on a close analysis of previously neglected archives in English, French, and Chinese, Jacobs finds that many local elites in China acquiesced to the removal of art and antiquities abroad, understanding their trade as currency for a cosmopolitan elite. In the decades after the 1911 Revolution, however, these antiquities went from being “diplomatic capital” to disputed icons of the emerging nation-state. A new generation of Chinese scholars began to criminalize the prior activities of archaeologists, erasing all memory of the pragmatic barter relationship that once existed in China. Recovering the voices of those local officials, scholars, and laborers who shaped the global trade in antiquities, The Compensations of Plunder brings historical grounding to a highly contentious topic in modern Chinese history and informs heated debates over cultural restitution throughout the world.