Katharine Ellis
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195365856
- eISBN:
- 9780199867738
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195365856.003.0008
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
This concluding chapter takes in the entire century, highlighting continuities and disjunctions, repertorial patterns, absences, and disappearances. It addresses the ways in which early music's ...
More
This concluding chapter takes in the entire century, highlighting continuities and disjunctions, repertorial patterns, absences, and disappearances. It addresses the ways in which early music's increasing normality related to aesthetic conservatism after around 1840, discusses the reasons for certain works' totemic allure, cautions against the rigid association of certain aesthetic choices with particular political persuasions, and foregrounds pervasive feelings of French musical decadence as a driving force for revivalism of both French and foreign music. Paradoxically, after decades of disdain, French Baroque dance and keyboard music — low-status “feminine” repertories — became the focus for turn-of-the-century composers writing explicitly “French” music, while Bach became a “universal” reference point. Finally, the book returns to its opening (Le Vieux Paris, 1900), broadening to address the general question of what revivalism can tell us about the ideological premises that underpin cultural life.Less
This concluding chapter takes in the entire century, highlighting continuities and disjunctions, repertorial patterns, absences, and disappearances. It addresses the ways in which early music's increasing normality related to aesthetic conservatism after around 1840, discusses the reasons for certain works' totemic allure, cautions against the rigid association of certain aesthetic choices with particular political persuasions, and foregrounds pervasive feelings of French musical decadence as a driving force for revivalism of both French and foreign music. Paradoxically, after decades of disdain, French Baroque dance and keyboard music — low-status “feminine” repertories — became the focus for turn-of-the-century composers writing explicitly “French” music, while Bach became a “universal” reference point. Finally, the book returns to its opening (Le Vieux Paris, 1900), broadening to address the general question of what revivalism can tell us about the ideological premises that underpin cultural life.
Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691151762
- eISBN:
- 9781400842599
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691151762.003.0006
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter examines how despite the historical influences of vegetarian Vaishnava traditions, Jainism, the salience of Mahatma Gandhi in Gujarat, and its current index of the abject, meat eating is ...
More
This chapter examines how despite the historical influences of vegetarian Vaishnava traditions, Jainism, the salience of Mahatma Gandhi in Gujarat, and its current index of the abject, meat eating is not simply associated with disgust. It also carries great potency, and can signify power. If meat eating was on the one hand identified with vice and with groups considered backward, it could alternatively also be associated with erotic attraction and an alluring potency, modern decadence, and cosmopolitan freedom—an association gaining ground especially among the young. The dual valence of meat is acutely present in how members of lower-caste groups explain, legitimize, and rationalize their own practices of meat consumption or abstention.Less
This chapter examines how despite the historical influences of vegetarian Vaishnava traditions, Jainism, the salience of Mahatma Gandhi in Gujarat, and its current index of the abject, meat eating is not simply associated with disgust. It also carries great potency, and can signify power. If meat eating was on the one hand identified with vice and with groups considered backward, it could alternatively also be associated with erotic attraction and an alluring potency, modern decadence, and cosmopolitan freedom—an association gaining ground especially among the young. The dual valence of meat is acutely present in how members of lower-caste groups explain, legitimize, and rationalize their own practices of meat consumption or abstention.
Thomas F. Haddox
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- March 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823225217
- eISBN:
- 9780823236947
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fso/9780823225217.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Literature
This book charts what has been a largely unexplored literary landscape, looking at the work of such diverse writers as the gens de couleur libre poets of antebellum New Orleans, Kate ...
More
This book charts what has been a largely unexplored literary landscape, looking at the work of such diverse writers as the gens de couleur libre poets of antebellum New Orleans, Kate Chopin, Mark Twain, Carson McCullers, Margaret Mitchell, Allen Tate, Caroline Gordon, Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, and John Kennedy Toole. It shows that Catholicism and its Church have always been a presence, albeit in different ways, in the southern cultural tradition. For some, Catholicism has been associated with miscegenation and with the political aspirations of African Americans; for others, it has served as the model for the feudal and patriarchal society that some southern whites sought to establish; for still others, it has presented a gorgeous aesthetic spectacle associated with decadence and homoeroticism; and for still others, it has marked a quotidian, do-it-yourself “lifestyle” attractive for its lack of concern with southern anxieties about honor. By focusing on the shifting and contradictory ways Catholicism has signified within southern literature and culture, this book contributes to a more nuanced understanding of American and southern literary and cultural history.Less
This book charts what has been a largely unexplored literary landscape, looking at the work of such diverse writers as the gens de couleur libre poets of antebellum New Orleans, Kate Chopin, Mark Twain, Carson McCullers, Margaret Mitchell, Allen Tate, Caroline Gordon, Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, and John Kennedy Toole. It shows that Catholicism and its Church have always been a presence, albeit in different ways, in the southern cultural tradition. For some, Catholicism has been associated with miscegenation and with the political aspirations of African Americans; for others, it has served as the model for the feudal and patriarchal society that some southern whites sought to establish; for still others, it has presented a gorgeous aesthetic spectacle associated with decadence and homoeroticism; and for still others, it has marked a quotidian, do-it-yourself “lifestyle” attractive for its lack of concern with southern anxieties about honor. By focusing on the shifting and contradictory ways Catholicism has signified within southern literature and culture, this book contributes to a more nuanced understanding of American and southern literary and cultural history.
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 ...
More
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.
James Watt
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199554157
- eISBN:
- 9780191720437
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199554157.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature, 18th-century Literature
Beckford's Vathek (1786) is indebted both to the oriental pastiches of Anthony Hamilton and to the orientalist scholarship of Barthelemy D'Herbelot. This chapter begins by examining the generic and ...
More
Beckford's Vathek (1786) is indebted both to the oriental pastiches of Anthony Hamilton and to the orientalist scholarship of Barthelemy D'Herbelot. This chapter begins by examining the generic and tonal heterogeneity of Vathek, via a detailed focus on its critical reception, and on the relations between Beckford and his editor Samuel Henley. By seizing on the historical figure of Vathek, Beckford made possible different allegorical interpretations of his work, allowing readers to see his protagonist as, among other things, an exemplification of imperial decadence. But in interweaving different registers of detail, culturally specific and outlandishly absurd, Beckford also took the language of Orientalist fantasy to a point of near-collapse, ironizing any such solemn constructions of his work. Reading Vathek in the context of the Nights’ contemporary reception, the chapter concludes by suggesting that Beckford sought to keep alive a form of literary invention that would remain non-accountable, beyond critical and editorial regulation.Less
Beckford's Vathek (1786) is indebted both to the oriental pastiches of Anthony Hamilton and to the orientalist scholarship of Barthelemy D'Herbelot. This chapter begins by examining the generic and tonal heterogeneity of Vathek, via a detailed focus on its critical reception, and on the relations between Beckford and his editor Samuel Henley. By seizing on the historical figure of Vathek, Beckford made possible different allegorical interpretations of his work, allowing readers to see his protagonist as, among other things, an exemplification of imperial decadence. But in interweaving different registers of detail, culturally specific and outlandishly absurd, Beckford also took the language of Orientalist fantasy to a point of near-collapse, ironizing any such solemn constructions of his work. Reading Vathek in the context of the Nights’ contemporary reception, the chapter concludes by suggesting that Beckford sought to keep alive a form of literary invention that would remain non-accountable, beyond critical and editorial regulation.
Michela Coletta
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781786941312
- eISBN:
- 9781789629040
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781786941312.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Latin American History
How did Latin Americans represent their own countries as modern? By treating modernity as a ubiquitous category in which ideas of progress and decadence are far from being mutually exclusive, this ...
More
How did Latin Americans represent their own countries as modern? By treating modernity as a ubiquitous category in which ideas of progress and decadence are far from being mutually exclusive, this book explores how different groups of intellectuals, between the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century, drew from European sociological and medical theories to produce a series of cultural representations based on notions of degeneration. Through a comparative analysis of three country case studies − Argentina, Uruguay and Chile − the book investigates four themes that were central to definitions of Latin American modernity at the turn of the century: race and the nation, the search for the autochthonous, education, and aesthetic values. It takes a transnational approach to show how civilisational constructs were adopted and adapted in a postcolonial context where cultural modernism foreshadowed economic modernisation. In doing this, this work sheds new light on the complex discursive negotiations through which the idea of ‘Latin America’ became gradually established in the region.Less
How did Latin Americans represent their own countries as modern? By treating modernity as a ubiquitous category in which ideas of progress and decadence are far from being mutually exclusive, this book explores how different groups of intellectuals, between the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century, drew from European sociological and medical theories to produce a series of cultural representations based on notions of degeneration. Through a comparative analysis of three country case studies − Argentina, Uruguay and Chile − the book investigates four themes that were central to definitions of Latin American modernity at the turn of the century: race and the nation, the search for the autochthonous, education, and aesthetic values. It takes a transnational approach to show how civilisational constructs were adopted and adapted in a postcolonial context where cultural modernism foreshadowed economic modernisation. In doing this, this work sheds new light on the complex discursive negotiations through which the idea of ‘Latin America’ became gradually established in the region.
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 ...
More
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.
Peter Jeffreys
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801447082
- eISBN:
- 9781501701252
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801447082.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
During his sojourn in England during the 1870s, a young C. P. Cavafy found himself enthralled by the aesthetic movement of cosmopolitan London. It was during these years that he encountered the ...
More
During his sojourn in England during the 1870s, a young C. P. Cavafy found himself enthralled by the aesthetic movement of cosmopolitan London. It was during these years that he encountered the canvases and personalities of Pre-Raphaelite painters, including Edward Burne-Jones and James McNeill Whistler, as well as works of aesthetic writers who were effecting a revolution in British literary culture and channeling influences from France that would gradually coalesce into an international decadent movement. This book returns to this critical period of Cavafy's life, showing the poet's creative indebtedness to British and French avant-garde aesthetes whose collective impact on his poetry proved to be profound. It offers a critical reappraisal of Cavafy's relation to Victorian aestheticism and French literary decadence. Foremost among the tropes of decadence that captivated Cavafy were the decline of imperial Rome, the rise of Christianity, and the lingering twilight of Byzantium. The influence of Walter Pater on Cavafy's view of classical and late-antique history was immense, inflected as it was with an unapologetic homoerotic aesthetic that Cavafy would adopt as his own, making Pater's imaginary portraits an important touchstone for his own historicizing poetry. Cavafy would move beyond Pater to explore a more openly homoerotic sensuality but he never quite abandoned this rich Victorian legacy, one that contributed greatly to his emergence as a global poet. The book concludes by considering Cavafy's current popularity as a gay poet and his curious relation to kitsch as manifest in his ongoing popularity via translation and visual media.Less
During his sojourn in England during the 1870s, a young C. P. Cavafy found himself enthralled by the aesthetic movement of cosmopolitan London. It was during these years that he encountered the canvases and personalities of Pre-Raphaelite painters, including Edward Burne-Jones and James McNeill Whistler, as well as works of aesthetic writers who were effecting a revolution in British literary culture and channeling influences from France that would gradually coalesce into an international decadent movement. This book returns to this critical period of Cavafy's life, showing the poet's creative indebtedness to British and French avant-garde aesthetes whose collective impact on his poetry proved to be profound. It offers a critical reappraisal of Cavafy's relation to Victorian aestheticism and French literary decadence. Foremost among the tropes of decadence that captivated Cavafy were the decline of imperial Rome, the rise of Christianity, and the lingering twilight of Byzantium. The influence of Walter Pater on Cavafy's view of classical and late-antique history was immense, inflected as it was with an unapologetic homoerotic aesthetic that Cavafy would adopt as his own, making Pater's imaginary portraits an important touchstone for his own historicizing poetry. Cavafy would move beyond Pater to explore a more openly homoerotic sensuality but he never quite abandoned this rich Victorian legacy, one that contributed greatly to his emergence as a global poet. The book concludes by considering Cavafy's current popularity as a gay poet and his curious relation to kitsch as manifest in his ongoing popularity via translation and visual media.
Roger Keys
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198151609
- eISBN:
- 9780191672767
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198151609.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism, European Literature
Decadence, Neo-romanticism, Symbolism, Modernism, and the Silver Age are some of the commoner designations of the period which followed the flowering of the Realist novel in Russia. This chapter ...
More
Decadence, Neo-romanticism, Symbolism, Modernism, and the Silver Age are some of the commoner designations of the period which followed the flowering of the Realist novel in Russia. This chapter proposes to dispense with the words ‘symbolist’ or ‘symbolic’ as a means of designating similarity or dissimilarity in type or function between works written during this period. Instead, it uses the word ‘modernist’ to denote those distinctive and novel qualities held in common by a substantial group of works written during the period. It also describes the significance of the term ‘Silver Age’ and its success in Russia as a convenient way of designating and rehabilitating the non-realistic art produced during the period from the 1890s to the 1920s.Less
Decadence, Neo-romanticism, Symbolism, Modernism, and the Silver Age are some of the commoner designations of the period which followed the flowering of the Realist novel in Russia. This chapter proposes to dispense with the words ‘symbolist’ or ‘symbolic’ as a means of designating similarity or dissimilarity in type or function between works written during this period. Instead, it uses the word ‘modernist’ to denote those distinctive and novel qualities held in common by a substantial group of works written during the period. It also describes the significance of the term ‘Silver Age’ and its success in Russia as a convenient way of designating and rehabilitating the non-realistic art produced during the period from the 1890s to the 1920s.
James H. Murphy
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199596997
- eISBN:
- 9780191723520
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199596997.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
The last decades of the century saw great changes in the writing of fiction. In Britain, where George Moore, Oscar Wilde, and Bram Stoker were among the most prominent novelists, high-culture ...
More
The last decades of the century saw great changes in the writing of fiction. In Britain, where George Moore, Oscar Wilde, and Bram Stoker were among the most prominent novelists, high-culture movements such as naturalism, decadence, and early modernism, vied with popular forms such as detective fiction, the imperial adventure, and science fiction. Authors like B. M. Croker wrote novels of life in India, while Robert Cromie was prominent in science-fiction and future-war fantasies. In Ireland groupings of writers wrote for differing audiences. Ulster fiction began to emerge in the north with Shan F. Bullock and others. Meanwhile, in the south, Anglo-Irish novelists like Somerville and Ross took to comedy and satire, while Catholic-intelligentsia writers began to scrutinize a changed society. Some novels explored the possibilities of the renewal of society while others interrogated the newer sets of relationships that were possible across traditional class lines and the great landlord–tenant divide, now that the latter was in the process of dissolving.Less
The last decades of the century saw great changes in the writing of fiction. In Britain, where George Moore, Oscar Wilde, and Bram Stoker were among the most prominent novelists, high-culture movements such as naturalism, decadence, and early modernism, vied with popular forms such as detective fiction, the imperial adventure, and science fiction. Authors like B. M. Croker wrote novels of life in India, while Robert Cromie was prominent in science-fiction and future-war fantasies. In Ireland groupings of writers wrote for differing audiences. Ulster fiction began to emerge in the north with Shan F. Bullock and others. Meanwhile, in the south, Anglo-Irish novelists like Somerville and Ross took to comedy and satire, while Catholic-intelligentsia writers began to scrutinize a changed society. Some novels explored the possibilities of the renewal of society while others interrogated the newer sets of relationships that were possible across traditional class lines and the great landlord–tenant divide, now that the latter was in the process of dissolving.
David Rollo
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226724614
- eISBN:
- 9780226724607
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226724607.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
Conservative thinkers of the early Middle Ages conceived of sensual gratification as a demonic snare contrived to debase the higher faculties of humanity, and they identified pagan writing as one of ...
More
Conservative thinkers of the early Middle Ages conceived of sensual gratification as a demonic snare contrived to debase the higher faculties of humanity, and they identified pagan writing as one of the primary conduits of decadence. Two aspects of the pagan legacy were treated with particular distrust: fiction, conceived as a devious contrivance that falsified God's order; and rhetorical opulence, viewed as a vain extravagance. Writing that offered these dangerous allurements came to be known as “hermaphroditic” and, by the later Middle Ages, to be equated with homosexuality. At the margins of these developments, however, some authors began to validate fiction as a medium for truth and a source of legitimate enjoyment, while others began to explore and defend the pleasures of opulent rhetoric. This book examines two such texts—Alain de Lille's De planctu Naturae and Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun's Roman de la Rose–-arguing that their authors, in acknowledging the liberating potential of their irregular written orientations, brought about a nuanced reappraisal of homosexuality. The book concludes with a consideration of the influence of the latter on Chaucer's Pardoner's Prologue and Tale.Less
Conservative thinkers of the early Middle Ages conceived of sensual gratification as a demonic snare contrived to debase the higher faculties of humanity, and they identified pagan writing as one of the primary conduits of decadence. Two aspects of the pagan legacy were treated with particular distrust: fiction, conceived as a devious contrivance that falsified God's order; and rhetorical opulence, viewed as a vain extravagance. Writing that offered these dangerous allurements came to be known as “hermaphroditic” and, by the later Middle Ages, to be equated with homosexuality. At the margins of these developments, however, some authors began to validate fiction as a medium for truth and a source of legitimate enjoyment, while others began to explore and defend the pleasures of opulent rhetoric. This book examines two such texts—Alain de Lille's De planctu Naturae and Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun's Roman de la Rose–-arguing that their authors, in acknowledging the liberating potential of their irregular written orientations, brought about a nuanced reappraisal of homosexuality. The book concludes with a consideration of the influence of the latter on Chaucer's Pardoner's Prologue and Tale.
Kostas Boyiopoulos
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780748690923
- eISBN:
- 9781474412377
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748690923.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This is the first book that exclusively attends to the Decadent poetry and poetics of the British fin de siècle. It explores culturally significant encounters between sensuality and artificiality in ...
More
This is the first book that exclusively attends to the Decadent poetry and poetics of the British fin de siècle. It explores culturally significant encounters between sensuality and artificiality in Decadence by examining, together for the first time, the work of three protagonists of the 1890s: Oscar Wilde, Arthur Symons, and Ernest Dowson. In its overarching argument the book highlights an exasperating yet productive paradox that lies at the heart of Decadent poetics. On the one hand Decadence venerates the inaccessible, representational realm of artificiality; on the other hand it relishes sensuous experience in its immediacy as it is advocated by Walter Pater. This paradox is expressed in erotic encounters with statues, ‘soulless’ women, fetishes, landscapes, dead bodies, and texts. These encounters, the book suggests, develop in three stages: Wilde’s early and middle period poetry showcases the sensuality circumscribed in the frozen surface of art. With Symons the erotic encounter with artificiality reaches its apex as it is elevated to a fragmented, urban experience. In Dowson, through images of death, isolation and exhaustion, these encounters remain unrealised tragic possibilities. The book sees these Decadent poems as sites where the self, in the context of transgression, tends to become sensually immersed in and with their art and artifice. Aesthetic appreciation turns into Decadent participation in a foredoomed erotic experience ultimately with the very texture of language itself.Less
This is the first book that exclusively attends to the Decadent poetry and poetics of the British fin de siècle. It explores culturally significant encounters between sensuality and artificiality in Decadence by examining, together for the first time, the work of three protagonists of the 1890s: Oscar Wilde, Arthur Symons, and Ernest Dowson. In its overarching argument the book highlights an exasperating yet productive paradox that lies at the heart of Decadent poetics. On the one hand Decadence venerates the inaccessible, representational realm of artificiality; on the other hand it relishes sensuous experience in its immediacy as it is advocated by Walter Pater. This paradox is expressed in erotic encounters with statues, ‘soulless’ women, fetishes, landscapes, dead bodies, and texts. These encounters, the book suggests, develop in three stages: Wilde’s early and middle period poetry showcases the sensuality circumscribed in the frozen surface of art. With Symons the erotic encounter with artificiality reaches its apex as it is elevated to a fragmented, urban experience. In Dowson, through images of death, isolation and exhaustion, these encounters remain unrealised tragic possibilities. The book sees these Decadent poems as sites where the self, in the context of transgression, tends to become sensually immersed in and with their art and artifice. Aesthetic appreciation turns into Decadent participation in a foredoomed erotic experience ultimately with the very texture of language itself.
Jonathan Wild
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780748635061
- eISBN:
- 9781474419536
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748635061.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This book challenges conventional views of the Edwardian period as either a hangover of Victorianism or a bystander to literary modernism. The text investigates the literary history of the Edwardian ...
More
This book challenges conventional views of the Edwardian period as either a hangover of Victorianism or a bystander to literary modernism. The text investigates the literary history of the Edwardian decade. This period, long overlooked by critics, is revealed as a vibrant cultural era whose writers were determined to break away from the stifling influence of preceding Victorianism. In the hands of this generation, which included writers such as Arnold Bennett, Joseph Conrad, E. M. Forster, Beatrix Potter, and H. G. Wells, the new century presented a unique opportunity to fashion innovative books for fresh audiences. Wild traces this literary innovation by conceptualising the focal points of his study as branches of one of the new department stores that epitomized Edwardian modernity. These ‘departments’ — war and imperialism, the rise of the lower middle class, children's literature, technology and decadence, and the condition of England — offer both discrete and interconnected ways in which to understand the distinctiveness and importance of the Edwardian literary scene. Overall, this book offers a long-overdue investigation into a decade of literature that provided the cultural foundation for the coming century.Less
This book challenges conventional views of the Edwardian period as either a hangover of Victorianism or a bystander to literary modernism. The text investigates the literary history of the Edwardian decade. This period, long overlooked by critics, is revealed as a vibrant cultural era whose writers were determined to break away from the stifling influence of preceding Victorianism. In the hands of this generation, which included writers such as Arnold Bennett, Joseph Conrad, E. M. Forster, Beatrix Potter, and H. G. Wells, the new century presented a unique opportunity to fashion innovative books for fresh audiences. Wild traces this literary innovation by conceptualising the focal points of his study as branches of one of the new department stores that epitomized Edwardian modernity. These ‘departments’ — war and imperialism, the rise of the lower middle class, children's literature, technology and decadence, and the condition of England — offer both discrete and interconnected ways in which to understand the distinctiveness and importance of the Edwardian literary scene. Overall, this book offers a long-overdue investigation into a decade of literature that provided the cultural foundation for the coming century.
Jed Esty
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199857968
- eISBN:
- 9780199919581
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199857968.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter analyzes Wilde's Dorian Gray and Wells's Tono-Bungay as antidevelopmental novels that reveal, from the perspective of the metropole, the increasing displacement of national by global ...
More
This chapter analyzes Wilde's Dorian Gray and Wells's Tono-Bungay as antidevelopmental novels that reveal, from the perspective of the metropole, the increasing displacement of national by global frames of reference for the British novel. Wilde and Wells embed the motif of broken Bildung in a wider story of the disjunction between capitalist dynamism (consumerist lust, rampant financial speculation, bottomless energy needs) and national tradition. Wilde's cosmopolitan decadence and Wells's global marketing give us what we might call the two faces of post-national narrative, rendered in terms of an overt crisis in the allegorization of the maturing soul linked to the modernizing society. In these two novels of endless youth, modern consumer culture fully penetrates the plot of socialization, unraveling the culture-commerce compromise of the classic bildungsroman with particular clarity and throwing overboard the heterosexual marriage plot as the presumed center of social reproduction.Less
This chapter analyzes Wilde's Dorian Gray and Wells's Tono-Bungay as antidevelopmental novels that reveal, from the perspective of the metropole, the increasing displacement of national by global frames of reference for the British novel. Wilde and Wells embed the motif of broken Bildung in a wider story of the disjunction between capitalist dynamism (consumerist lust, rampant financial speculation, bottomless energy needs) and national tradition. Wilde's cosmopolitan decadence and Wells's global marketing give us what we might call the two faces of post-national narrative, rendered in terms of an overt crisis in the allegorization of the maturing soul linked to the modernizing society. In these two novels of endless youth, modern consumer culture fully penetrates the plot of socialization, unraveling the culture-commerce compromise of the classic bildungsroman with particular clarity and throwing overboard the heterosexual marriage plot as the presumed center of social reproduction.
Simon Morrison
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520229433
- eISBN:
- 9780520927261
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520229433.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
An aesthetic, historical, and theoretical study of four scores, this text is a treatment of the topic of Russian opera in the Silver Age. Spanning the gap between the supernatural Russian music of ...
More
An aesthetic, historical, and theoretical study of four scores, this text is a treatment of the topic of Russian opera in the Silver Age. Spanning the gap between the supernatural Russian music of the 19th century and the compositions of Prokofiev and Stravinsky, the book explores how Russian symbolist poets interpreted opera and prompted operatic innovation. The book shows how these works, though stylistically and technically different, reveal the extent to which the operatic representation of the miraculous can be translated into its enactment. The book treats these largely unstudied pieces by canonical composers: Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades; Rimsky-Korsakov's Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya; Scriabin's unfinished Mysterium; and Prokofiev's Fiery Angel. The chapters, revisionist studies of these composers and scores, address separate aspects of symbolist poetics, discussing such topics as literary and musical decadence, pagan-Christian syncretism, theurgy, and life creation, or the portrayal of art in life. The appendix offers a complete English-language translation of Scriabin's libretto for the Preparatory Act.Less
An aesthetic, historical, and theoretical study of four scores, this text is a treatment of the topic of Russian opera in the Silver Age. Spanning the gap between the supernatural Russian music of the 19th century and the compositions of Prokofiev and Stravinsky, the book explores how Russian symbolist poets interpreted opera and prompted operatic innovation. The book shows how these works, though stylistically and technically different, reveal the extent to which the operatic representation of the miraculous can be translated into its enactment. The book treats these largely unstudied pieces by canonical composers: Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades; Rimsky-Korsakov's Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya; Scriabin's unfinished Mysterium; and Prokofiev's Fiery Angel. The chapters, revisionist studies of these composers and scores, address separate aspects of symbolist poetics, discussing such topics as literary and musical decadence, pagan-Christian syncretism, theurgy, and life creation, or the portrayal of art in life. The appendix offers a complete English-language translation of Scriabin's libretto for the Preparatory Act.
Ben Fisher
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780853239161
- eISBN:
- 9781846313721
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846313721
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This book is a study of aspects of 1890s French literature, with specific reference to the traditions of Symbolism and Decadence. Its main focus is Alfred Jarry, who has proved, perhaps surprisingly, ...
More
This book is a study of aspects of 1890s French literature, with specific reference to the traditions of Symbolism and Decadence. Its main focus is Alfred Jarry, who has proved, perhaps surprisingly, to be one of the more durable fin–de–siècle authors. The originality of this study lies in its use of the enigmatic list of books termed the livres pairs, which appears in Jarry's 1898 novel Gestes et Opinions du docteur Faustroll, pataphysicien, his best–known prose work. The greatest interest of the livres pairs lies in a group of works by Jarry's friends and contemporaries, primarily Leon Bloy, Georges Darien, Gustave Kahn, Catulle Mendes, Josephin Madan, Rachilde, and Henri de Regnier. Several of these authors feature as the lords of islands visited by the pataphysician Dr Faustroll in his curious voyage around Paris. In conjunction with Jarry's own works, the contemporary livres pairs serve to illustrate the vibrant and experimental atmosphere in which these authors worked.Less
This book is a study of aspects of 1890s French literature, with specific reference to the traditions of Symbolism and Decadence. Its main focus is Alfred Jarry, who has proved, perhaps surprisingly, to be one of the more durable fin–de–siècle authors. The originality of this study lies in its use of the enigmatic list of books termed the livres pairs, which appears in Jarry's 1898 novel Gestes et Opinions du docteur Faustroll, pataphysicien, his best–known prose work. The greatest interest of the livres pairs lies in a group of works by Jarry's friends and contemporaries, primarily Leon Bloy, Georges Darien, Gustave Kahn, Catulle Mendes, Josephin Madan, Rachilde, and Henri de Regnier. Several of these authors feature as the lords of islands visited by the pataphysician Dr Faustroll in his curious voyage around Paris. In conjunction with Jarry's own works, the contemporary livres pairs serve to illustrate the vibrant and experimental atmosphere in which these authors worked.
C. W. Thompson
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199233540
- eISBN:
- 9780191730948
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199233540.003.0013
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
French Romantic novels and travelogues had helped each other to enrich description. Yet at their best, Nodier, Stendhal, Hugo, and Nerval showed that description was most effective when not allowed ...
More
French Romantic novels and travelogues had helped each other to enrich description. Yet at their best, Nodier, Stendhal, Hugo, and Nerval showed that description was most effective when not allowed to dominate in narratives blending personal adventures and impressions with contemporary, historical, and legendary stories. After 1850, this balance would be upset as travelogues succumbed to the pressures for more precision and description exerted by positivism, photography, and other multiplying sources of information. The genre lost its way, becoming overwhelmed either by stories (late Dumas), or by description (late Gautier). However brilliant the descriptions of the latter's Italia (1852) and Constantinople (1853), the almost exclusive concern of such works with picturesque surfaces heralds the onset of a decadent strain that would culminate in the aesthetically titillating fin de siècle travelogues of Loti and Lorrain. The essential balance sought by the Romantics had more of a future, as foretold already by Fromentin.Less
French Romantic novels and travelogues had helped each other to enrich description. Yet at their best, Nodier, Stendhal, Hugo, and Nerval showed that description was most effective when not allowed to dominate in narratives blending personal adventures and impressions with contemporary, historical, and legendary stories. After 1850, this balance would be upset as travelogues succumbed to the pressures for more precision and description exerted by positivism, photography, and other multiplying sources of information. The genre lost its way, becoming overwhelmed either by stories (late Dumas), or by description (late Gautier). However brilliant the descriptions of the latter's Italia (1852) and Constantinople (1853), the almost exclusive concern of such works with picturesque surfaces heralds the onset of a decadent strain that would culminate in the aesthetically titillating fin de siècle travelogues of Loti and Lorrain. The essential balance sought by the Romantics had more of a future, as foretold already by Fromentin.
Gerd Gemünden
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252042836
- eISBN:
- 9780252051692
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042836.003.0002
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter explores Martel’s first feature, La ciénaga/The Swamp. It argues that the title location is a metaphor for the moral bankruptcy of an upper-class family that has seen its fortunes ...
More
This chapter explores Martel’s first feature, La ciénaga/The Swamp. It argues that the title location is a metaphor for the moral bankruptcy of an upper-class family that has seen its fortunes dwindle. The film’s scathing critique of bigotry, hypocrisy, and race relations is couched in the conventions of the horror film that reproduces in viewers the discomfort experienced by her characters. Martel’s unique use of sound, her use of nonprofessional actors, and her indebtedness to oral traditions create a heightened realism that transcends the region, and indeed the nation, it depicts.Less
This chapter explores Martel’s first feature, La ciénaga/The Swamp. It argues that the title location is a metaphor for the moral bankruptcy of an upper-class family that has seen its fortunes dwindle. The film’s scathing critique of bigotry, hypocrisy, and race relations is couched in the conventions of the horror film that reproduces in viewers the discomfort experienced by her characters. Martel’s unique use of sound, her use of nonprofessional actors, and her indebtedness to oral traditions create a heightened realism that transcends the region, and indeed the nation, it depicts.
Norman Ingram
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- March 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198827993
- eISBN:
- 9780191866685
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198827993.003.0010
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History, Political History
This book has been about the decline and fall of a great French republican institution, the Ligue des droits de l’homme (LDH). The LDH was torn apart by the war guilt question over the course of the ...
More
This book has been about the decline and fall of a great French republican institution, the Ligue des droits de l’homme (LDH). The LDH was torn apart by the war guilt question over the course of the entire period from 1914 to the fall of France in 1940. This debate was the catalyst for the emergence of a new style of pacifism in France which was hardly like its ‘placid’ interwar British cousin. The war guilt question was also the progenitor of a uniquely French suspicion, first of Russian, and ultimately of Soviet intentions. This led under Vichy to the appearance of collaboration and philo-fascism, but it was more a case of peace becoming an ‘ethic of ultimate ends’ for the minority within the LDH.Less
This book has been about the decline and fall of a great French republican institution, the Ligue des droits de l’homme (LDH). The LDH was torn apart by the war guilt question over the course of the entire period from 1914 to the fall of France in 1940. This debate was the catalyst for the emergence of a new style of pacifism in France which was hardly like its ‘placid’ interwar British cousin. The war guilt question was also the progenitor of a uniquely French suspicion, first of Russian, and ultimately of Soviet intentions. This led under Vichy to the appearance of collaboration and philo-fascism, but it was more a case of peace becoming an ‘ethic of ultimate ends’ for the minority within the LDH.
Patrick Maume
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781789620320
- eISBN:
- 9781789629958
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781789620320.003.0010
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History
This chapter relates Emily Lawless’s use of the imagery of the Atlantic Ocean and dissolution in water in her novels Major Lawrence FLS (1885) and Grania: The Story of an Island (1892) to her sense ...
More
This chapter relates Emily Lawless’s use of the imagery of the Atlantic Ocean and dissolution in water in her novels Major Lawrence FLS (1885) and Grania: The Story of an Island (1892) to her sense of the crisis of religious belief triggered by the Darwinian dissolution of the concept of fixed species, the Wagnerian and Schopenhauerian portrayal of the life-force embodied in sexuality as simultaneously ecstatic and entrapping, and the defeat and increasing irrelevance of the late Victorian Irish landed class.Less
This chapter relates Emily Lawless’s use of the imagery of the Atlantic Ocean and dissolution in water in her novels Major Lawrence FLS (1885) and Grania: The Story of an Island (1892) to her sense of the crisis of religious belief triggered by the Darwinian dissolution of the concept of fixed species, the Wagnerian and Schopenhauerian portrayal of the life-force embodied in sexuality as simultaneously ecstatic and entrapping, and the defeat and increasing irrelevance of the late Victorian Irish landed class.
