Marble, Muscle and Manly Bodies in the 18th Century
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 8 April 2019
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What was more important in the construction of an eighteenth-century man’s body: the dumbbell or the dumbwaiter? Who had the most enviable body shape: the svelte Apollo Belvedere or the rotund John Bull? Dr Sarah Goldsmith, from the University of Leicester, explores the early origins of modern gym culture in the tantalisingly elusive and occasionally surprisingly sweaty world of eighteenth-century male physicality.
Sarah Goldsmith is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the Centure for Urban History and School of History, University of Leicester.
Her Essay was recorded in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead as part of this year's Free Thinking Festival.
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right? |
| 0:23.3 | It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's |
| 0:27.5 | out of ice cream. |
| 0:28.8 | Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:33.2 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:36.8 | Hello, I'm Rana Mitter. |
| 0:38.4 | When you think Queen Anne, you may think Oscar winner, Olivia Coleman. |
| 0:43.0 | But do you think muscle-bound macho men? |
| 0:46.0 | Well, if you do, let's talk about it later. |
| 0:48.5 | One person who can certainly make the connection is Sarah Goldsmith of Leicester University. |
| 0:53.1 | She's a new generation thinker on the scheme, |
| 0:55.7 | which the BBC runs with the AHRC, who's going to take us back right now to the 18th century. |
| 1:06.8 | The year is 1711, and Queen Anne sits on the throne. |
| 1:12.5 | A gentleman stands alone in his apartment rooms. |
| 1:16.4 | The landlady and her daughters have strict instructions not to disturb him. |
| 1:21.9 | He breathes in, bends down, grasps the dumbbells on the floor, and begins to lift and swing. Lift and swing. |
| 1:31.4 | After an hour, muscles aching. He ends his daily routine. This man's name is Joseph Addison. He was a |
| 1:40.1 | Whig politician, the editor of the wildly successful periodical The Spectator, and perhaps |
| 1:45.8 | the very last man in England that we'd expect to find pumping iron before breakfast. |
| 1:52.0 | Nevertheless, this example of sweat and effort was a century ahead of the 19th century strong |
| 1:58.3 | man, and as a chronological anomaly, it invites us to reconsider what |
| 2:03.7 | 18th century men did with their bodies. When I think of the male body in the 18th century, |
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