Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2020 August 4

= August 4 =

Genre of fiction dealing with European visits to Africa.
I'm aware that there was a genre of fiction during the Victorian era and into the Edwardian, that dealt with colonial exploration of Africa, usually in a very dramatized way. Books such as the Tarzan series and Sanders of the River by Edgar Wallace (made into a film) would fit into this genre, and maybe Heart of Darkness by Conrad? but I'm not sure that the genre has a name. Some of it is quite sensationalist and deals with overtly stereotyped characters, whereas other books are more reflective of the actual socio-political situation of the times. I'd like to do more research on fiction of this type and how it progressed over time, but I'm having little luck finding a common banner that it would all come under. Any help much appreciated. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.150.44.129 (talk) 13:08, 4 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Maybe "imperial adventure fiction"? I also found The imperial Gothic from the British Library; "The term ‘imperial Gothic’ most commonly refers to late 19th-century fiction set in the British Empire that employs and adapts elements drawn from Gothic novels such as a gloomy, forbidding atmosphere; brutal, tyrannical men; spectacular forms of violence or punishment; and the presence of the occult or the supernatural". Alansplodge (talk) 14:03, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Category:Novels set in colonial Africa might be a good place to start putting something together. -- Jayron 32 15:21, 4 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Adding List_of_writing_genres, but I'm afraid nothing quite fits to my eye, though perhaps you will spot something relevant. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 16:38, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * And now a couple of references to show the kinds of terms sources are using: Victorian adventure story per, colonial bildungsroman per . 70.67.193.176 (talk) 16:51, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Bildungsroman "is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood (coming of age), in which character change is important", so maybe too specific for this purpose. Alansplodge (talk) 17:22, 4 August 2020 (UTC)


 * You mean subsaharan colonial Africa. [King Solomon's Mines] is described as [lost world] genre. Sleigh (talk) 10:23, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

When was peak women's clothing modesty?
The time periods in England, France and America respectively.

2. When was the peak of the 19th century?

3. Why did bonnets become unhip so early compared to many layers of petticoats and floor-length dresses if covering female hair is Biblical? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 16:44, 4 August 2020 (UTC)


 * To address your second question, this article blames the demise of the bonnet in Britain on the opera star Jenny Lind.
 * "Existing hats for women in the 1840s were limited mainly to the informal wide-brimmed straw variety, or the formal riding hat style. The 'Jenny Lind' was a complete departure from these modes. It was virtually identical to a man's 'wide-awake' hat, low-crowned with the brim sweeping up at the sides. The hat does not appear to have been the product of a Parisian fashion house, nor was it promoted by Jenny Lind. It emerged out of the 'Jenny Lind Fever' or 'Lindmania' which swept through the country in the late 1840s. The adulation of Jenny Lind by the British (and later the American) public can only be likened to the Beatlemania of the 1960s... The hat was based on the one worn by Jenny Lind in the opera La figlia del Reggimento (The Daughter of the Regiment) where she played the role of Maria, a French vivandière. This was a replica of the vivandière or cantinière hat worn by women in certain regiments of the French Army".
 * The same article reproduces an 1857 report: "The English Hat in Paris. — The fashion set by English ladies of wearing hats instead of bonnets has, after being a good deal ridiculed, been adopted by actresses and lorettes. It is always those two classes of the community who experimentalise new fashions, especially those of an eccentric character. There are indications that from them the new mode will soon reach ladies of respectability, and that it will in time become general".
 * Note that hat-wearing by both women and men was the norm in the UK until well into the 1950s, and that ladies' hats are still common at weddings in the UK, one of the last vestiges of this custom. Alansplodge (talk) 17:52, 4 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Sure there were lots of hats in the States too (especially men) but I remember some hatless floor-length dress white women sporting their hair in photographs, some must be American or in the non-UK part of Europe, what are likely explanations? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 19:19, 4 August 2020 (UTC)


 * And for the first question, floor-length skirts for adult women remained almost universal until the First World War, when a combination of female emancipation, wartime economy and women taking on men's jobs led to: "In 1915, hemlines rose to mid-calf and traditionalists complained of immodesty". Alansplodge (talk) 18:08, 4 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Can neckline and gloves (were they to completely hide your upper limb or just to look rich/a fad?) narrow it down more? Can the resulting period be narrowed down even more by "when hair was up not down like Mata Hari" or "number of skirt layers"? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 19:19, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * You're asking for a quantification (peak value) for a concept which is not itself quantifiable (modesty). Concepts like what defines a particular clothing style as "modest" have a fluid definition, and what one defines as modest in one context, is not modest in another.  There is no meaningful way to assign a numerical value to "modesty" and this there is no way to define what particular moment in history was "the most modest".  -- Jayron 32 19:25, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Then I could ask when the highest percent of surface area was covered by an average outfit, or as a proxy (if that's too hard) I could instead ask when neckline was highest in the floor-length dress era, and then ask out of those high-neckline low-hem eras when was the lowest percent of upper-limb visible and by then the amount of remaining history might be low enough that I could look back-and-forth at each fuzzy-edged time period and eliminate time till I decide the remaining era(s) are about tied for "most modest fashion of England, France and "the US or the 13 Colonies"" which is an interesting piece of trivia I think. Also I am curious what time period(s) had the most layers of dresses. This will be a fuzzy-edged, possibly long time period and not a precise number of layers obviously. It might not overlap with the "most percent covered era"(s) though. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 23:35, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Which would lead me to wonder why you think people have measured "surface area of skin covered by an average outfit". What would have lead you to believe such studies have been done?  -- Jayron 32 12:38, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
 * It's not impossible, Ig Nobel Prizes have been given for much weirder research (like poop velocity). Hemlines have probably been rigorously studied, I've seen diagrams that went from "peak miniskirt" (only a few years) to before the Interwar. Maybe you've even seen one attempting to show economic booms correlate with shorter skirts. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 16:01, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
 * If your benchmark for viable scientific research is a joke award given to wacky "research", I'm not sure there's any meaningful way to penetrate that with anything like useful knowledge, and I see no reason to further this line of response. That's not how this works.  That's not how any of this works.  -- Jayron 32 18:06, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I didn't know Ig Nobels didn't have to be from real journals OK?, I doubt the economic boom-shortening thing was. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 18:31, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Dr Livingstone I presume?
Working on the article for St John The Baptist's Church, Leytonstone in my native town, I recalled a story that it had been the last church that David Livingstone had worshipped at before leaving for Africa on his final expedition. That story is repeated on the church's website at A Brief History of St John's (scroll down to the timeline below the second section and click on the icon for "Reverend Horace Waller"), which says:
 * "Horace Waller was friends with many of the East African explorers, including Livingstone and Gordon... He was Curate of St. John's Chatham from 1868, before he came to St John's Leytonstone as Vicar in 1870. During that time David Livingstone often stayed at the Vicarage... indeed, he made his last communion at St. John's before he returned to Africa for the last time".

According to our article, Livingstone died in 1873 and had been in Africa for some years, so could he really have visited London in 1870 or later? Alansplodge (talk) 17:17, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * In I think the winter of 1962-1963 (February to be precise, when the snow lay on the ground for four months) our R.I. teacher instructed the whole class to attend Sunday evensong at St James, Church Cowley (the Oxford suburb where cars are made) to hear Gladys Aylward preach as we would likely not get another opportunity.  The church was full, she went back to China and died there not long after. 2A00:23C6:2403:E900:CD7E:E599:39C2:BF79 (talk) 18:46, 4 August 2020 (UTC)


 * The timeline seems off. According to our article on David Livingstone, he was in Africa from 1866 until his death in 1873.  I don't believe he returned to Britain in that time frame.  If he indeed worshipped at St John's, Leytonstone before leaving for Africa for the last time, it would have been before January, 1866.  This paper confirms it.  It looks like an authoritative book on his last journey would have been Linvingston's Last Journey by Reginald Coupland.  The phrase "during that time" however is rather wishy-washy and could refer to a general time frame rather than a specific point in time.  I wouldn't use the Church website as a source for a specific date given that the Church doesn't give one either.  It is probably just OK enough to note that he did worship there, but not enough to verify that he worshipped there in January 1866 before leaving on his final expedition, and he definitely did NOT worship there during the vicarship of Horace Waller if Waller became vicar only in 1870.  -- Jayron 32 19:02, 4 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Livingstone was never in England after January 1866. He may have met Waller through the Universities' Mission to Central Africa during his return to Britain in 1864-5, but the stories of him staying in Leytonstone after 1870 are nonsense. In 1869 he set off from Ujiji in search of the Lualaba, arriving in Nyangwe in March 1871. 19:23, 4 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the chronology, it led me to The life of David Livingstone (1908) p. 301 which says that his last weeks in England (August 1865) were spent with Rev. Dr. Hamilton, which seems to be James Hamilton (1814–1867), and on his last Sunday, Livingstone preached at Hamilton's church, which was the National Scotch Church, Regent Square, London. So it must be just a local myth. Thanks both. Alansplodge (talk) 19:59, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * It wouldn't, of course, be the first time a Church converted some half-remembered distant event into a Truth to be proclaimed to the Nations. DuncanHill (talk) 20:26, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * The biography Livingstone by Tim Jeal also has Livingstone's last visit "home" in 1864–65. --Lambiam 21:12, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Reminds me of a claim made by a railwayman in the book Stopping Train Britain (1983) that he'd heard Paganini once busked on the North London Line as a joke. It only opened ten years after he died... Blythwood (talk) 21:13, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
 * However, there is a documented connection between Livingstone and Leytonstone, Chuma and Susi, Livingstone's African companions, came to the UK in 1874 and were invited by Waller to stay at the vicarage in Leytonstone, and there the helped Waller to edit and annotate his journals which were published as The last journals of David Livingstone in Central Africa, from 1865 to his death: continued by a narrative of his last moments and sufferings, obtained from his faithful servants, Chuma and Susi. In the vicarage back garden, they built a replica of the African hut in which Livingstone had died; a photograph of it survives.  Alansplodge (talk) 17:00, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
 * So the myth may have originated as an instance of Chinese whispers: "A replica of the hut where Livingstone stayed, at the vicarage" → "A replica of the hut, where Livingstone stayed at the vicarage" → "Livingstone stayed at the vicarage". --Lambiam 12:34, 8 August 2020 (UTC)