Marilyn Booth
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780748694860
- eISBN:
- 9781474408639
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748694860.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Literature
This book history scrutinizes the production, advertising, contents, compilation and circulation – locally and globally – of an Arabic-language volume of biographies of world women, al-Durr ...
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This book history scrutinizes the production, advertising, contents, compilation and circulation – locally and globally – of an Arabic-language volume of biographies of world women, al-Durr al-manthur fi tabaqat rabbat al-khudur. The analysis of this volume of over 500 folio-size pages views it as an early work of Arab feminist history within the prolific career of Zaynab Fawwaz (c1850-1914), a Lebanese immigrant to Egypt and early feminist writer there. The study considers how Fawwaz drew on the venerable tradition of biography writing in Arabic but also turned to contemporary sources (magazines, an encyclopedia, world histories); how she centred Arab subjects and Islamic history but included women from across the world and from ancient eras right up to the fin-de-siècle; how she incorporated a quiet celebration of Shi‘i women (of which she was one), especially from the early Islamic period; how the work suggests a collective and cooperative female intellectual presence in the 1890s Arab capitals, and also responds to works on women’s history by her male contemporaries; and how Fawwaz’s writing became implicated in the project for a Women’s Library at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago.Less
This book history scrutinizes the production, advertising, contents, compilation and circulation – locally and globally – of an Arabic-language volume of biographies of world women, al-Durr al-manthur fi tabaqat rabbat al-khudur. The analysis of this volume of over 500 folio-size pages views it as an early work of Arab feminist history within the prolific career of Zaynab Fawwaz (c1850-1914), a Lebanese immigrant to Egypt and early feminist writer there. The study considers how Fawwaz drew on the venerable tradition of biography writing in Arabic but also turned to contemporary sources (magazines, an encyclopedia, world histories); how she centred Arab subjects and Islamic history but included women from across the world and from ancient eras right up to the fin-de-siècle; how she incorporated a quiet celebration of Shi‘i women (of which she was one), especially from the early Islamic period; how the work suggests a collective and cooperative female intellectual presence in the 1890s Arab capitals, and also responds to works on women’s history by her male contemporaries; and how Fawwaz’s writing became implicated in the project for a Women’s Library at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
Max Saunders
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199579761
- eISBN:
- 9780191722882
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199579761.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This book explores how writers from the 1870s to the 1930s experimented with forms of life‐writing — biography, autobiography, memoir, diary, journal — increasingly for the purposes of fiction. It ...
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This book explores how writers from the 1870s to the 1930s experimented with forms of life‐writing — biography, autobiography, memoir, diary, journal — increasingly for the purposes of fiction. It argues for an upsurge in new hybrid forms — identified in a surprisingly early essay of 1906 (which provides a key term) as ‘autobiografiction’. Examples include ‘Mark Rutherford’, Gissing, Samuel Butler, Gosse, and A. C. Benson. The book offers a taxonomy of their extraordinary variety, showing how they arose as the pressures of secularization and psychological theory disturbed the categories of biography and autobiography. It argues that a group of concepts, forms, and tropes regularly co‐exist: portraiture, imaginary portraits, collections of such portraits; and (because they are often of imaginary artists) imaginary works of art and literature. Autobiografiction also sheds strong light on modernism. Modernism is often characterized as a movement of ‘impersonality' — a rejection of auto/biography — but most of its major works engage in profound ways with questions of life‐writing. The second part looks at writers experimenting further with autobiografiction as impressionism turns into modernism, and consists of detailed readings of Joyce, Stein, Pound, Woolf, and others, and juxtaposing their work with contemporaries whose experiments with life‐writing forms are no less striking. It argues that connecting modernist games with auto/biography and the ‘New Biography’ with their turn‐of‐the‐century precursors allows them to be understood in a new way. A coda considers the after‐life of these experiments in postmodern fiction. A conclusion considers the theoretical implications developed throughout, and argues that ‘autobiografiction’ can also shed light on under‐theorized questions such as what we mean by ‘autobiographical’ and the relations between autobiography and fiction.Less
This book explores how writers from the 1870s to the 1930s experimented with forms of life‐writing — biography, autobiography, memoir, diary, journal — increasingly for the purposes of fiction. It argues for an upsurge in new hybrid forms — identified in a surprisingly early essay of 1906 (which provides a key term) as ‘autobiografiction’. Examples include ‘Mark Rutherford’, Gissing, Samuel Butler, Gosse, and A. C. Benson. The book offers a taxonomy of their extraordinary variety, showing how they arose as the pressures of secularization and psychological theory disturbed the categories of biography and autobiography. It argues that a group of concepts, forms, and tropes regularly co‐exist: portraiture, imaginary portraits, collections of such portraits; and (because they are often of imaginary artists) imaginary works of art and literature. Autobiografiction also sheds strong light on modernism. Modernism is often characterized as a movement of ‘impersonality' — a rejection of auto/biography — but most of its major works engage in profound ways with questions of life‐writing. The second part looks at writers experimenting further with autobiografiction as impressionism turns into modernism, and consists of detailed readings of Joyce, Stein, Pound, Woolf, and others, and juxtaposing their work with contemporaries whose experiments with life‐writing forms are no less striking. It argues that connecting modernist games with auto/biography and the ‘New Biography’ with their turn‐of‐the‐century precursors allows them to be understood in a new way. A coda considers the after‐life of these experiments in postmodern fiction. A conclusion considers the theoretical implications developed throughout, and argues that ‘autobiografiction’ can also shed light on under‐theorized questions such as what we mean by ‘autobiographical’ and the relations between autobiography and fiction.
Koenraad Claes
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474426213
- eISBN:
- 9781474453776
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474426213.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
Fed up with the commercial and moral restrictions of the mainstream press of the late Victorian era, the diverse avant-garde groups of authors and artists of the Aesthetic Movement developed a new ...
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Fed up with the commercial and moral restrictions of the mainstream press of the late Victorian era, the diverse avant-garde groups of authors and artists of the Aesthetic Movement developed a new genre of periodicals in which to propagate their principles and circulate their work. Such periodicals are known as ‘little magazines’ for their small-scale production and their circulation among limited audiences, and during the late Victorian period they were often conceptualized as integrated design project or ‘Total Works of Art’ in order to visually and materially represent the ideals of their producers. Little magazines like the Pre-Raphaelite Germ, the Arts & Crafts Hobby Horse and the Decadent Yellow Book launched the careers of innovative authors and artists and provided a site for debate between minor contributors and visiting grandees from Matthew Arnold to Oscar Wilde. This book offers detailed discussions of the background to thirteen little magazines of the Victorian Fin de Siècle, situating these within the periodical press of their day and providing interpretations of representative content items. In doing so, it outlines the earliest history of this enduring publication genre, and of the Aesthetic Movement that developed along with it.Less
Fed up with the commercial and moral restrictions of the mainstream press of the late Victorian era, the diverse avant-garde groups of authors and artists of the Aesthetic Movement developed a new genre of periodicals in which to propagate their principles and circulate their work. Such periodicals are known as ‘little magazines’ for their small-scale production and their circulation among limited audiences, and during the late Victorian period they were often conceptualized as integrated design project or ‘Total Works of Art’ in order to visually and materially represent the ideals of their producers. Little magazines like the Pre-Raphaelite Germ, the Arts & Crafts Hobby Horse and the Decadent Yellow Book launched the careers of innovative authors and artists and provided a site for debate between minor contributors and visiting grandees from Matthew Arnold to Oscar Wilde. This book offers detailed discussions of the background to thirteen little magazines of the Victorian Fin de Siècle, situating these within the periodical press of their day and providing interpretations of representative content items. In doing so, it outlines the earliest history of this enduring publication genre, and of the Aesthetic Movement that developed along with it.
Max Saunders
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199579761
- eISBN:
- 9780191722882
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199579761.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter suggests a new reading of one of Pound's most contested works in terms of the contexts provided in Part I. In particular, Pound's parody of aestheticism is compared to Beerbohm's in ...
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This chapter suggests a new reading of one of Pound's most contested works in terms of the contexts provided in Part I. In particular, Pound's parody of aestheticism is compared to Beerbohm's in Seven Men. The critical tradition has been excessively preoccupied with trying to identify the speakers and ‘originals’ of each section of Mauberley. It argues that, seen in relation to the growing interest in portrait collections, composite portraiture, the disturbances in auto/biography, and imaginary art‐works, this poem sequence can be read as a parody of the forms of literary memoir, through which Pound also explores autobiography.Less
This chapter suggests a new reading of one of Pound's most contested works in terms of the contexts provided in Part I. In particular, Pound's parody of aestheticism is compared to Beerbohm's in Seven Men. The critical tradition has been excessively preoccupied with trying to identify the speakers and ‘originals’ of each section of Mauberley. It argues that, seen in relation to the growing interest in portrait collections, composite portraiture, the disturbances in auto/biography, and imaginary art‐works, this poem sequence can be read as a parody of the forms of literary memoir, through which Pound also explores autobiography.
Victoria Margree, Daniel Orrells, and Minna Vuohelainen (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781526124340
- eISBN:
- 9781526136206
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526124340.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This collection of essays seeks to question the security of our assumptions about the fin de siècle by exploring the fiction of Richard Marsh, an important but neglected professional author. Richard ...
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This collection of essays seeks to question the security of our assumptions about the fin de siècle by exploring the fiction of Richard Marsh, an important but neglected professional author. Richard Bernard Heldmann (1857–1915) began his literary career as a writer of boys’ fiction, but, following a prison sentence for fraud, reinvented himself as ‘Richard Marsh’ in 1888. Marsh was a prolific and popular author of middlebrow genre fiction including Gothic, crime, humour, romance and adventure, whose bestselling Gothic novel The Beetle: A Mystery (1897) outsold Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Building on a burgeoning interest in Marsh’s writing, this collection of essays examines a broad array of Marsh’s genre fictions through the lens of cutting-edge critical theory, including print culture, New Historicism, disability studies, genre theory, New Economic Criticism, gender theory, postcolonial studies, thing theory, psychoanalysis, object relations theory and art history, producing innovative readings not only of Marsh but of the fin-de-siècle period. Marsh emerges here as a versatile contributor to the literary and journalistic culture of his time whose stories of shape-shifting monsters, daring but morally dubious heroes, lip-reading female detectives and objects that come to life helped to shape the genres of fiction with which we are familiar today. Marsh’s fictions reflect contemporary themes and anxieties while often offering unexpected, subversive and even counter-hegemonic takes on dominant narratives of gender, criminality, race and class, unsettling our perceptions of the fin de siècle.Less
This collection of essays seeks to question the security of our assumptions about the fin de siècle by exploring the fiction of Richard Marsh, an important but neglected professional author. Richard Bernard Heldmann (1857–1915) began his literary career as a writer of boys’ fiction, but, following a prison sentence for fraud, reinvented himself as ‘Richard Marsh’ in 1888. Marsh was a prolific and popular author of middlebrow genre fiction including Gothic, crime, humour, romance and adventure, whose bestselling Gothic novel The Beetle: A Mystery (1897) outsold Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Building on a burgeoning interest in Marsh’s writing, this collection of essays examines a broad array of Marsh’s genre fictions through the lens of cutting-edge critical theory, including print culture, New Historicism, disability studies, genre theory, New Economic Criticism, gender theory, postcolonial studies, thing theory, psychoanalysis, object relations theory and art history, producing innovative readings not only of Marsh but of the fin-de-siècle period. Marsh emerges here as a versatile contributor to the literary and journalistic culture of his time whose stories of shape-shifting monsters, daring but morally dubious heroes, lip-reading female detectives and objects that come to life helped to shape the genres of fiction with which we are familiar today. Marsh’s fictions reflect contemporary themes and anxieties while often offering unexpected, subversive and even counter-hegemonic takes on dominant narratives of gender, criminality, race and class, unsettling our perceptions of the fin de siècle.
Josephine M. Guy (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474408912
- eISBN:
- 9781474445030
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474408912.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
The 22 newly commissioned essays in this volume re-examine some of the key concepts taken to define the British fin se siècle while also introducing hitherto overlooked cultural phenomena, such as ...
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The 22 newly commissioned essays in this volume re-examine some of the key concepts taken to define the British fin se siècle while also introducing hitherto overlooked cultural phenomena, such as humanitarianism. The impact of research into material culture is explored; specifically, how the history of the book and of performance culture is changing our understanding of this period. A wide range of activities is discussed, from participation in avant-garde theatre to interior decoration, and from the publishing of poetry to forms of political and religious activism. Attention is also given to how the meaning of the fin de siècle is impacted by place, including the significance of cultural exchanges between Britain and countries such as Russia and Italy; the distinctiveness of the Irish and Scottish fin de siècles; as well as activities within different regions of England, such as in the Midlands cities of Birmingham and Nottingham. In contrast to recent research exploring the global or transnational dimensions of the fin de siècle, this volume focuses on micro- rather than macro-cultural issues, the research underpinning these essays highlighting a diversity of practices that developed along different timelines and in different geographical locations, and which do not cohere into any simple pattern. Nor is there any obvious point of their intersection which might be said to mark a cultural turning point. A question the volume as a whole thus aims to pose is whether there is anything to be gained by distinguishing all, of any, of these practices as ‘fin-de-siècle’?Less
The 22 newly commissioned essays in this volume re-examine some of the key concepts taken to define the British fin se siècle while also introducing hitherto overlooked cultural phenomena, such as humanitarianism. The impact of research into material culture is explored; specifically, how the history of the book and of performance culture is changing our understanding of this period. A wide range of activities is discussed, from participation in avant-garde theatre to interior decoration, and from the publishing of poetry to forms of political and religious activism. Attention is also given to how the meaning of the fin de siècle is impacted by place, including the significance of cultural exchanges between Britain and countries such as Russia and Italy; the distinctiveness of the Irish and Scottish fin de siècles; as well as activities within different regions of England, such as in the Midlands cities of Birmingham and Nottingham. In contrast to recent research exploring the global or transnational dimensions of the fin de siècle, this volume focuses on micro- rather than macro-cultural issues, the research underpinning these essays highlighting a diversity of practices that developed along different timelines and in different geographical locations, and which do not cohere into any simple pattern. Nor is there any obvious point of their intersection which might be said to mark a cultural turning point. A question the volume as a whole thus aims to pose is whether there is anything to be gained by distinguishing all, of any, of these practices as ‘fin-de-siècle’?
Lena Wånggren
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474416269
- eISBN:
- 9781474434645
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474416269.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This book examines late nineteenth-century feminism in relation to technologies of the time, marking the crucial role of technology in social and literary struggles for equality. The New Woman, the ...
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This book examines late nineteenth-century feminism in relation to technologies of the time, marking the crucial role of technology in social and literary struggles for equality. The New Woman, the fin de siècle cultural archetype of early feminism, became the focal figure for key nineteenth-century debates concerning issues such as gender and sexuality, evolution and degeneration, science, empire and modernity. While the New Woman is located in the debates concerning the ‘crisis in gender’ or ‘sexual anarchy’ of the time, the period also saw an upsurge of new technologies of communication, transport and medicine.
This book explores the interlinking of gender and technology in writings by overlooked authors such as Grant Allen, Tom Gallon, H. G. Wells, Margaret Todd and Mathias McDonnell Bodkin. As the book demonstrates, literature of the time is inevitably caught up in a technological modernity: technologies such as the typewriter, the bicycle, and medical technologies, through literary texts come to work as freedom machines, as harbingers of female emancipation.Less
This book examines late nineteenth-century feminism in relation to technologies of the time, marking the crucial role of technology in social and literary struggles for equality. The New Woman, the fin de siècle cultural archetype of early feminism, became the focal figure for key nineteenth-century debates concerning issues such as gender and sexuality, evolution and degeneration, science, empire and modernity. While the New Woman is located in the debates concerning the ‘crisis in gender’ or ‘sexual anarchy’ of the time, the period also saw an upsurge of new technologies of communication, transport and medicine.
This book explores the interlinking of gender and technology in writings by overlooked authors such as Grant Allen, Tom Gallon, H. G. Wells, Margaret Todd and Mathias McDonnell Bodkin. As the book demonstrates, literature of the time is inevitably caught up in a technological modernity: technologies such as the typewriter, the bicycle, and medical technologies, through literary texts come to work as freedom machines, as harbingers of female emancipation.
William Oddie
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199582013
- eISBN:
- 9780191702303
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199582013.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Literature
When Orthodoxy was published in 1908, Wilfrid Ward hailed Chesterton as a prophetic figure, whose thought was to be classed with that of Burke, Butler, and Coleridge. This book provides a ...
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When Orthodoxy was published in 1908, Wilfrid Ward hailed Chesterton as a prophetic figure, whose thought was to be classed with that of Burke, Butler, and Coleridge. This book provides a biographical study on Chesterton and draws on the wealth of letters and journalistic writings within the newly released ‘Chesterton Papers’ archive at the British Library. The book brings new biographical details to light that expand on existing Chesterton studies. When Chesterton died in 1936, T. S. Eliot pronounced that Chesterton's ‘social and economic ideas were the ideas for his time that were fundamentally Christian and Catholic’, elaborating that he attached significance also to his ‘development’. The book examines these ‘social and economic ideas’ but focuses on his ‘development’, both imaginative and spiritual — from his early childhood in the 1870s to his intellectual maturity in the first decade of the 20th century. It charts Chesterton's progression from his first story (composed at the age of three) to his masterpiece, Orthodoxy, in which he established the foundations on which the writing of his last three decades would build. Part One explores the years of Chesterton's obscurity — his childhood, his adolescence, his years as a young adult. Part Two examines his emergence onto the public stage, his success as one of the leading journalists of his day and his growing renown as a man of letters.Less
When Orthodoxy was published in 1908, Wilfrid Ward hailed Chesterton as a prophetic figure, whose thought was to be classed with that of Burke, Butler, and Coleridge. This book provides a biographical study on Chesterton and draws on the wealth of letters and journalistic writings within the newly released ‘Chesterton Papers’ archive at the British Library. The book brings new biographical details to light that expand on existing Chesterton studies. When Chesterton died in 1936, T. S. Eliot pronounced that Chesterton's ‘social and economic ideas were the ideas for his time that were fundamentally Christian and Catholic’, elaborating that he attached significance also to his ‘development’. The book examines these ‘social and economic ideas’ but focuses on his ‘development’, both imaginative and spiritual — from his early childhood in the 1870s to his intellectual maturity in the first decade of the 20th century. It charts Chesterton's progression from his first story (composed at the age of three) to his masterpiece, Orthodoxy, in which he established the foundations on which the writing of his last three decades would build. Part One explores the years of Chesterton's obscurity — his childhood, his adolescence, his years as a young adult. Part Two examines his emergence onto the public stage, his success as one of the leading journalists of his day and his growing renown as a man of letters.
SARAH BILSTON
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199272617
- eISBN:
- 9780191709685
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199272617.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter examines the intersections between romance and New Woman fictions on the question of sexual knowledge. It shows that New Woman author and the romance writer may both now be resituated ...
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This chapter examines the intersections between romance and New Woman fictions on the question of sexual knowledge. It shows that New Woman author and the romance writer may both now be resituated within a broader Victorian female tradition, a vibrant literary community, a strong history of dialogue and debate. It demonstrates that the New Woman herself stands revealed as daughter to a host of rebellious, transitional heroines from the literature of the later nineteenth century.Less
This chapter examines the intersections between romance and New Woman fictions on the question of sexual knowledge. It shows that New Woman author and the romance writer may both now be resituated within a broader Victorian female tradition, a vibrant literary community, a strong history of dialogue and debate. It demonstrates that the New Woman herself stands revealed as daughter to a host of rebellious, transitional heroines from the literature of the later nineteenth century.
Michela Coletta
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781786941312
- eISBN:
- 9781789629040
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781786941312.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Latin American History
The introduction starts by defining the theoretical framework in the context of recent and current debates on ‘multiple modernities’, which often fail to include Latin America. This section then ...
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The introduction starts by defining the theoretical framework in the context of recent and current debates on ‘multiple modernities’, which often fail to include Latin America. This section then moves on to discuss the relevance of and relation between key categories, primarily those of ‘civilisation’ and ‘decadence’ − which were increasingly used in association with each other − with respect to the more recent notion of degeneration which provided them with a scientific analytical foundation. In the late nineteenth-century, many started to feel that ‘modern civilisation’ carried within itself the danger of deviance, especially as the medical model of social analysis became established. I discuss here how these debates culminated in the years between the mid-1890s and the early 1900s, when the process of nation-building and economic prosperity reached its peak in the Southern Cone as the rapid changes that had taken place during the previous two decades became consolidated. Among the main consequences were the growth of the urban population and the consequent rise of the so-called ‘social question’. It was during this time that the need to rethink how the idea of civilisation should be approached acquired for the first time such huge prominence in Latin America.Less
The introduction starts by defining the theoretical framework in the context of recent and current debates on ‘multiple modernities’, which often fail to include Latin America. This section then moves on to discuss the relevance of and relation between key categories, primarily those of ‘civilisation’ and ‘decadence’ − which were increasingly used in association with each other − with respect to the more recent notion of degeneration which provided them with a scientific analytical foundation. In the late nineteenth-century, many started to feel that ‘modern civilisation’ carried within itself the danger of deviance, especially as the medical model of social analysis became established. I discuss here how these debates culminated in the years between the mid-1890s and the early 1900s, when the process of nation-building and economic prosperity reached its peak in the Southern Cone as the rapid changes that had taken place during the previous two decades became consolidated. Among the main consequences were the growth of the urban population and the consequent rise of the so-called ‘social question’. It was during this time that the need to rethink how the idea of civilisation should be approached acquired for the first time such huge prominence in Latin America.
Nick Freeman
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474435734
- eISBN:
- 9781474453721
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474435734.003.0014
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
The poet, critic and short story writer Arthur Symons (1865–1945) was an inveterate traveller who wrote frequently about the Channel and the North Cornish coasts in poetry and prose. During the 1890s ...
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The poet, critic and short story writer Arthur Symons (1865–1945) was an inveterate traveller who wrote frequently about the Channel and the North Cornish coasts in poetry and prose. During the 1890s and 1900s, he was at the forefront of the pre-modernist avant-garde, and was an important conduit for the dissemination of decadent and impressionist art in England. As a landscape writer, he blended the quasi-Impressionist methods of painters such as Whistler with the decadent’s concern with the privileged subjectivity of the artist. This chapter examines the implications of such practices for his treatment of Cornwall, Sussex and Dieppe – including in neglected later writings such as ‘Sea Magic’ (1920).Less
The poet, critic and short story writer Arthur Symons (1865–1945) was an inveterate traveller who wrote frequently about the Channel and the North Cornish coasts in poetry and prose. During the 1890s and 1900s, he was at the forefront of the pre-modernist avant-garde, and was an important conduit for the dissemination of decadent and impressionist art in England. As a landscape writer, he blended the quasi-Impressionist methods of painters such as Whistler with the decadent’s concern with the privileged subjectivity of the artist. This chapter examines the implications of such practices for his treatment of Cornwall, Sussex and Dieppe – including in neglected later writings such as ‘Sea Magic’ (1920).
Lawrence Kramer
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520241732
- eISBN:
- 9780520940840
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520241732.003.0008
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
This chapter appraises the second landmark of the Fin-de-Siècle genre, Elektra. A dancer sustaining on fantasies of blood sacrifice, eroticizing her kinship with her sister and brother, raising the ...
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This chapter appraises the second landmark of the Fin-de-Siècle genre, Elektra. A dancer sustaining on fantasies of blood sacrifice, eroticizing her kinship with her sister and brother, raising the voice of her hysterical desires in contrast to the shrill babble of the serving maids who act as a chorus, Elektra rivaled the frenzy of her predecessor, Salome, being born of the same progenitor, Richard Strauss. This chapter delves into the essence of unabashed supremacism emitted from Salome's and Elektra's indifferent free reign over the rest of the opera, amidst a general chorus that is rendered timid and ignorable by the protagonist's undoubted reign over the scene in those obvious moments. In an attempt to bridge the two characters Weininger provides an appropriate allegory—while Salome represents violent eroticism, Elektra displays erotic violence. In their dynamics they contrast the highs and lows of human nature, and subsequently the realization of supremacist culture.Less
This chapter appraises the second landmark of the Fin-de-Siècle genre, Elektra. A dancer sustaining on fantasies of blood sacrifice, eroticizing her kinship with her sister and brother, raising the voice of her hysterical desires in contrast to the shrill babble of the serving maids who act as a chorus, Elektra rivaled the frenzy of her predecessor, Salome, being born of the same progenitor, Richard Strauss. This chapter delves into the essence of unabashed supremacism emitted from Salome's and Elektra's indifferent free reign over the rest of the opera, amidst a general chorus that is rendered timid and ignorable by the protagonist's undoubted reign over the scene in those obvious moments. In an attempt to bridge the two characters Weininger provides an appropriate allegory—while Salome represents violent eroticism, Elektra displays erotic violence. In their dynamics they contrast the highs and lows of human nature, and subsequently the realization of supremacist culture.
Matthew L. Reznicek
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781942954323
- eISBN:
- 9781786944320
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781942954323.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
It is well known that Somerville and Ross were deeply influenced by the art of fin-de-siècle Paris, but little scholarship explores their representations of that city. This chapter argues that the ...
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It is well known that Somerville and Ross were deeply influenced by the art of fin-de-siècle Paris, but little scholarship explores their representations of that city. This chapter argues that the individual’s ability to exist within the city is firstly determined by one’s relationship to economics, which is, fundamentally, shaped by one’s gender. For Somerville and Ross, Paris in the nineteenth century is a place of artistic possibilities that is not equally available.Less
It is well known that Somerville and Ross were deeply influenced by the art of fin-de-siècle Paris, but little scholarship explores their representations of that city. This chapter argues that the individual’s ability to exist within the city is firstly determined by one’s relationship to economics, which is, fundamentally, shaped by one’s gender. For Somerville and Ross, Paris in the nineteenth century is a place of artistic possibilities that is not equally available.
Matthew L. Reznicek
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781942954323
- eISBN:
- 9781786944320
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781942954323.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
Katherine Cecil Thurston’s 1910 novel, Max, explores the bohemian Paris of the fin-de-siècle through the eyes of a young artist newly arrived from Russia. This young man is, however, actually a young ...
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Katherine Cecil Thurston’s 1910 novel, Max, explores the bohemian Paris of the fin-de-siècle through the eyes of a young artist newly arrived from Russia. This young man is, however, actually a young princess in disguise, trying to escape an abusive marriage. Through the use of disguise and the New Woman figure of the female-to-male transvestite, this novel represents Paris through two competing genres: the masculine adventure narrative and the female romance.Less
Katherine Cecil Thurston’s 1910 novel, Max, explores the bohemian Paris of the fin-de-siècle through the eyes of a young artist newly arrived from Russia. This young man is, however, actually a young princess in disguise, trying to escape an abusive marriage. Through the use of disguise and the New Woman figure of the female-to-male transvestite, this novel represents Paris through two competing genres: the masculine adventure narrative and the female romance.
Ailise Bulfin
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781526124340
- eISBN:
- 9781526136206
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526124340.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter analyses the relationship between Marsh’s bestselling novel of Egyptian malevolence, The Beetle: A Mystery (1897), and a subgenre of Gothic Egyptian fiction which developed partially in ...
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This chapter analyses the relationship between Marsh’s bestselling novel of Egyptian malevolence, The Beetle: A Mystery (1897), and a subgenre of Gothic Egyptian fiction which developed partially in response to contentious Anglo-Egyptian political relations. Marsh began writing his novel in 1895, the same year General Herbert Kitchener launched his famous and ultimately successful campaign to quell Islamic-nationalist rebellion in northern Sudan, then indirectly under Anglo-Egyptian control. This chapter exposes the links between the novel and colonial politics, placing The Beetle within the context of Anglo-Egyptian and Sudanese conflict, rather than broadly reading it against general imperial concerns. The chapter provides a fuller picture of both the remarkable revival of the Gothic literary mode at the fin de siècle and the society in which this literary phenomenon occurred. The chapter also reveals how Marsh’s text dramatically exceeded Gothic Egyptian genre conventions in its emphasis on pagan as well as colonial monstrosity.Less
This chapter analyses the relationship between Marsh’s bestselling novel of Egyptian malevolence, The Beetle: A Mystery (1897), and a subgenre of Gothic Egyptian fiction which developed partially in response to contentious Anglo-Egyptian political relations. Marsh began writing his novel in 1895, the same year General Herbert Kitchener launched his famous and ultimately successful campaign to quell Islamic-nationalist rebellion in northern Sudan, then indirectly under Anglo-Egyptian control. This chapter exposes the links between the novel and colonial politics, placing The Beetle within the context of Anglo-Egyptian and Sudanese conflict, rather than broadly reading it against general imperial concerns. The chapter provides a fuller picture of both the remarkable revival of the Gothic literary mode at the fin de siècle and the society in which this literary phenomenon occurred. The chapter also reveals how Marsh’s text dramatically exceeded Gothic Egyptian genre conventions in its emphasis on pagan as well as colonial monstrosity.
Paul Foster
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719089770
- eISBN:
- 9781781708651
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719089770.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
In Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), Dracula visits the cinematograph upon arrival in London, made plausible by setting the scene in the year of the novel's publication, 1897. The ...
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In Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), Dracula visits the cinematograph upon arrival in London, made plausible by setting the scene in the year of the novel's publication, 1897. The film forcefully reminds us that Dracula and cinema are contemporaneous; fin-de-siècle Gothic and cinema emerge concurrently because they are produced out of the same cultural, social and historical forces. Supernatural claims were made on behalf of cinematic technology: ‘death will no longer be final’, concluded one account of the Lumière Cinématographe premiere. Less enamoured reporters described the new medium in strange and spectral, even deathly, terms; most famously perhaps, Maxim Gorky: ‘Last night I was in the Kingdom of Shadows…’. But if there was something ‘Gothic’ about emergent cinema, there was something ‘cinematic’ about the resurgent Gothic. This chapter identifies and analyses proto-filmic elements in works by Stevenson, Wilde, Wells and Stoker.Less
In Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), Dracula visits the cinematograph upon arrival in London, made plausible by setting the scene in the year of the novel's publication, 1897. The film forcefully reminds us that Dracula and cinema are contemporaneous; fin-de-siècle Gothic and cinema emerge concurrently because they are produced out of the same cultural, social and historical forces. Supernatural claims were made on behalf of cinematic technology: ‘death will no longer be final’, concluded one account of the Lumière Cinématographe premiere. Less enamoured reporters described the new medium in strange and spectral, even deathly, terms; most famously perhaps, Maxim Gorky: ‘Last night I was in the Kingdom of Shadows…’. But if there was something ‘Gothic’ about emergent cinema, there was something ‘cinematic’ about the resurgent Gothic. This chapter identifies and analyses proto-filmic elements in works by Stevenson, Wilde, Wells and Stoker.
Andrew Smith
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781784995102
- eISBN:
- 9781526128287
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781784995102.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, Social History
In ‘Reading the Gothic and Gothic Readers’ Andrew Smith outlines how recent developments in Gothic studies have provided new ways of critically reflecting upon the nineteenth century. Smith then ...
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In ‘Reading the Gothic and Gothic Readers’ Andrew Smith outlines how recent developments in Gothic studies have provided new ways of critically reflecting upon the nineteenth century. Smith then proceeds to explore how readers and reading, as images of self-reflection, are represented in the fin de siècle Gothic. The self-reflexive nature of the late nineteenth-century Gothic demonstrates a level of political and cultural scepticism at work in the period which, Smith argues, can be applied to recent developments in animal studies as a hitherto largely overlooked critical paradigm that can be applied to the Gothic. To that end this chapter examines representations of reading, readers, and implied readers in Arthur Machen’s The Great God Pan (1894), Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), and Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), focusing on how these representations explore the relationship between the human and the non-human. An extended account of Dracula identifies ways in which these images of self-reflection relate to the presence of the inner animal and more widely the chapter argues for a way of rethinking the period within the context of animal studies via these ostensibly Gothic constructions of human and animal identities.Less
In ‘Reading the Gothic and Gothic Readers’ Andrew Smith outlines how recent developments in Gothic studies have provided new ways of critically reflecting upon the nineteenth century. Smith then proceeds to explore how readers and reading, as images of self-reflection, are represented in the fin de siècle Gothic. The self-reflexive nature of the late nineteenth-century Gothic demonstrates a level of political and cultural scepticism at work in the period which, Smith argues, can be applied to recent developments in animal studies as a hitherto largely overlooked critical paradigm that can be applied to the Gothic. To that end this chapter examines representations of reading, readers, and implied readers in Arthur Machen’s The Great God Pan (1894), Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), and Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), focusing on how these representations explore the relationship between the human and the non-human. An extended account of Dracula identifies ways in which these images of self-reflection relate to the presence of the inner animal and more widely the chapter argues for a way of rethinking the period within the context of animal studies via these ostensibly Gothic constructions of human and animal identities.
Haewon Hwang
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748676071
- eISBN:
- 9780748693818
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748676071.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This chapter focuses on the most conceptual use of the ‘underground’ that divorces the term from direct spatial connotations. In this ideological framework, Marxism, nationalism and terrorism all ...
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This chapter focuses on the most conceptual use of the ‘underground’ that divorces the term from direct spatial connotations. In this ideological framework, Marxism, nationalism and terrorism all converge in the network of subterranean, subversive activities, which extend beyond the borders of London to Russia, Ireland, Continental Europe and the Americas. Although socialist gatherings and political meetings were often spatialised in underground terms as hidden, secret and covert, the rhetoric of political movements was pervasive and contagious on the surface of the city, as political demonstrations and dynamite detonations terrorised the urban imagination. However, the chapter also examines the absence of terrorism in literary works, where the spectre of violence pervades the novel in private and domestic ways. As in previous chapters, women are aligned with subterranean activities, but in a revolutionary context, women are often depicted as ‘networkers’ in the web of intrigue, more threatening than the male counterparts themselves.Less
This chapter focuses on the most conceptual use of the ‘underground’ that divorces the term from direct spatial connotations. In this ideological framework, Marxism, nationalism and terrorism all converge in the network of subterranean, subversive activities, which extend beyond the borders of London to Russia, Ireland, Continental Europe and the Americas. Although socialist gatherings and political meetings were often spatialised in underground terms as hidden, secret and covert, the rhetoric of political movements was pervasive and contagious on the surface of the city, as political demonstrations and dynamite detonations terrorised the urban imagination. However, the chapter also examines the absence of terrorism in literary works, where the spectre of violence pervades the novel in private and domestic ways. As in previous chapters, women are aligned with subterranean activities, but in a revolutionary context, women are often depicted as ‘networkers’ in the web of intrigue, more threatening than the male counterparts themselves.
Josephine M. Guy
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474408912
- eISBN:
- 9781474445030
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474408912.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter provides an overview of critical histories of the fin de siècle outlining some of the key concepts associated with defining this period in literary history. It explores the relationship ...
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This chapter provides an overview of critical histories of the fin de siècle outlining some of the key concepts associated with defining this period in literary history. It explores the relationship between global, national and regional understandings of the fin de siècle, and poses questions about the utility of the term ‘fin de siècle’ as marking out a distinct period in literary history. The Introduction also provides brief summaries of each of the following chapters in the volume.Less
This chapter provides an overview of critical histories of the fin de siècle outlining some of the key concepts associated with defining this period in literary history. It explores the relationship between global, national and regional understandings of the fin de siècle, and poses questions about the utility of the term ‘fin de siècle’ as marking out a distinct period in literary history. The Introduction also provides brief summaries of each of the following chapters in the volume.
Thomas Dodman
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226492803
- eISBN:
- 9780226493138
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226493138.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, History of Ideas
More so than romantic poets, it was fears about “excessive” seasoning, creolization, and racial degeneration in the colonies that helped demedicalize nostalgia in the second half of the nineteenth ...
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More so than romantic poets, it was fears about “excessive” seasoning, creolization, and racial degeneration in the colonies that helped demedicalize nostalgia in the second half of the nineteenth century, for it promised to “preserve” Europeans overseas, by sustaining their emotional attachment to home and motherland. Rural communities formerly considered ineligible for emigration due to likely homesickness thus became ideal candidates for resettlement. Colonies came to acquire a distinctly European look-alike resemblance, a nostalgic simulacra designed to make Algeria look and, ideally, feel decidedly French. This chapter brings to a close the tortuous trajectory of clinical nostalgia by showing how its naturalization into a benign and instinctual sentiment was tied up in the articulation of modern “invented traditions” and the competing forms of territorial belonging (local, national, imperial) in the global fin de siècle. By also tracing nostalgia’s quiet afterlife in twentieth-century military psychiatry, it suggests that we view this historical emotion not as an alternative to a linear understanding of modernity as progress, but as a constitutive moment in a much more dialectical logic of social transformation characteristic of the capitalist epoch.Less
More so than romantic poets, it was fears about “excessive” seasoning, creolization, and racial degeneration in the colonies that helped demedicalize nostalgia in the second half of the nineteenth century, for it promised to “preserve” Europeans overseas, by sustaining their emotional attachment to home and motherland. Rural communities formerly considered ineligible for emigration due to likely homesickness thus became ideal candidates for resettlement. Colonies came to acquire a distinctly European look-alike resemblance, a nostalgic simulacra designed to make Algeria look and, ideally, feel decidedly French. This chapter brings to a close the tortuous trajectory of clinical nostalgia by showing how its naturalization into a benign and instinctual sentiment was tied up in the articulation of modern “invented traditions” and the competing forms of territorial belonging (local, national, imperial) in the global fin de siècle. By also tracing nostalgia’s quiet afterlife in twentieth-century military psychiatry, it suggests that we view this historical emotion not as an alternative to a linear understanding of modernity as progress, but as a constitutive moment in a much more dialectical logic of social transformation characteristic of the capitalist epoch.
