VEGETABLE MONSTERS: MAN-EATING TREES IN FIN-DE-SIÈCLE FICTION

2013 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 311-327 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheryl Blake Price
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Charles Dickens ◽  
Charlotte Bronte ◽  
Warning Signs ◽  
Thomas Carlyle ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Narrative Progression

Gothic stories and fictionalized travel accounts featuring dangerous exotic plants appeared throughout the nineteenth century and were especially prevalent at the fin de siècle. As the century progressed and the public's fascination with these narratives grew, fictional plants underwent a narrative evolution. By the end of the Victorian period, deadly plants had been transformed from passive poisoners into active carnivores. Stories about man-eating trees, among the most popular of the deadly plant tales, reflect this narrative progression. The trope of the man-eating tree developed out of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century accounts of a much less dangerous plant: the Javanese upas. Tales about the upas described the tree as having a poisonous atmosphere which killed every living thing within a several mile radius. The existence of this plant was first reported by a Dutch surgeon named Foersch in a 1783 article published in the London Magazine, and the story was recounted several times throughout the century (“The Valley of Poison” 46). A typical account of the popular tale would highlight the exotic location and the mysterious power of the tree: Somewhere in the far recesses of Java there is, according to Foersch, a dreadful tree, the poisonous secretions of which are so virulent, that they not only kill by contact, but poison the air for several miles around, so that the greater number of those who approach the vegetable monster are killed. Nothing whatever, he tells us, can grow within several miles of the upas tree, except some little trees of the same species. For a distance of about fifteen miles round the spot, the ground is covered with the skeletons of birds, beasts, and human beings. (“The Upas Tree of Fact and Fiction” 12) Even though more credible adventurers revealed the inaccuracies of Foersch's report and thoroughly discredited the fantastic powers attributed to the upas, the story nonetheless took hold of the Victorian imagination. As a result of Foersch's widely-circulated narrative, the word “upas” was rapidly incorporated into the English lexicon; writers such as Erasmus Darwin, Thomas Carlyle, Charlotte Brontë, and Charles Dickens use the upas as a metaphor for a person, object, or idea that has a poisonous, destructive atmosphere. The upas was even a subject for nineteenth-century art, as evidenced by Francis Danby's 1820 gothic painting of a solitary upas tree in the midst of a desolate rocky landscape. Although the myth of the upas focuses on the tree's lethal powers, it is important to note that the upas is, relatively speaking, a very passive “vegetable monster.” The plant is potentially dangerous, but stationary; extremely isolated, it is only harmful to those who rashly ignore the warning signs and wander within the area of its poisonous influence. Even in these exaggerated accounts, the upas is a non-carnivorous monster that grows in a remote, uninhabited area of Java.

scholarly journals Are Human Beings Ultimately Ignorant?

2013 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Sanna
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Time Machine ◽  
External Reality ◽  
Useful Knowledge ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Scientific Journalism

This paper analyzes that part of Huxley’s theories which denied the absoluteness and certainty of science and compares it to the representation of science given in the fin-de-siècle novels The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells. I shall argue that the scientific and the agnostic enterprises aimed at the explanation of knowledge as conducted by Huxley in the last decades of the nineteenth century inexorably led to an admission of ignorance. The same concerns are present in the scientific romances of Wells. In order to affirm this, I shall initially investigate how the scientific journalism that underpins Wells’s early fiction shares Huxley’s insistence upon the contingency of human knowledge, and then demonstrate how his novels take up these Huxleian preoccupations. This is achieved by means of the representation of the protagonists’ accounts as not completely accurate and reliable because they are passionately involved in the events they witness. Moreover, Wells characterizes human knowledge of the external reality as imprecise and not offering any certainty which could guarantee lasting safety and comfort for human beings. Science and its method are finally represented by Wells as offering no definitive and useful knowledge of reality.

Illustrated Media, the Built Environment and Identity Politics in Fin-de-siècle Catalonia: Printing Images, Making the Nation

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-135
Author(s):  
Lucila Mallart
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Built Environment ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Constitutive Relationship ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Late Nineteenth

This article explores the role of visuality in the identity politics of fin-de-siècle Catalonia. It engages with the recent reevaluation of the visual, both as a source for the history of modern nation-building, and as a constitutive element in the emergence of civic identities in the liberal urban environment. In doing so, it offers a reading of the mutually constitutive relationship of the built environment and the print media in late-nineteenth century Catalonia, and explores the role of this relation as the mechanism by which the so-called ‘imagined communities’ come to exist. Engaging with debates on urban planning and educational policies, it challenges established views on the interplay between tradition and modernity in modern nation-building, and reveals long-term connections between late-nineteenth-century imaginaries and early-twentieth-century beliefs and practices.

Medical Humanism and Blackwood’s Magazine at the Fin de Siècle

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan Coyer
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Medical Profession ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Medical Humanism

If Blackwood’s helped to generate a recuperative medical humanism in the first half of the nineteenth century, what was its legacy? This ‘Coda’ turns to the fin de siècle to trace some key examples of a resurgence of the magazine’s mode of medical humanism at a time of perceived crisis for the medical profession, when many began ‘to worry that the transformation of medicine into a science, as well as the epistemological and technical successes of the new sciences, may have been bought at too great a price’....

Fin-de-Siècle Salonica

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Şükrü Hanioğlu
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Elementary School ◽  
Primary Education ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Turkish Republic ◽  
The Future ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Circle Of Friends ◽  
New Institutions

This chapter discusses Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's childhood in the ancient Macedonian capital of Salonica. The future founder of the Turkish Republic was born one winter, either in 1880 or in 1881. His upbringing was more liberal than that of most lower-class Muslims. No one in his family's circle of friends and relatives, for instance, practiced polygamy. Likewise, his father reportedly drank alcohol, which was abhorred by conservatives. The confusing dualism produced in Ottoman society by the reforms of the nineteenth century had its first imprint on Mustafa when his parents entered into a heated argument about his education. There is little doubt that Mustafa Kemal's deep-seated predilection for new institutions and practices owed much to his years as one of a handful of students in the empire who had their primary education at a private elementary school devoid of a strong religious focus.

OOK DE VIS MOET DUUR BETALEN

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 226-247
Author(s):  
Lucie Sedláčková
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
Speaking Out ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Sentient Beings ◽  
Animal Agency

THE FISH HAVE TO PAY DEARLY AS WELL The representations of animals and vegetarianism in the works of Herman Heijermans and other socially engaged writers of the fin de siècle At the end of the nineteenth century, the perception of animals changed significantly due to the theory of evolution and other new ideas, which also affected a number of Dutch socialist-leaning writers. Utilizing the framework of literary animal studies, this article investigates how animals were represented in their works. Most of the examined writers present animals as sentient beings, which is also ref lected by their speaking out in favour of vegetarianism. Herman Heijermans takes a more ambivalent position: some of his writings show the possibility of animal agency, whereas in others, animals are subordinate to people’s needs and are objectified.

scholarly journals "A Strange Fever of the Nerves and Blood": Nervous Illness in the Literature of the Nineteenth Century

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Sarah Parry
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Charles Dickens ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Charlotte Bronte ◽  
Wilkie Collins ◽  
The Public ◽  
Health And Wellbeing ◽  
Arthur Conan Doyle ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Rich

<p>In the nineteenth century, the discussion of personal health and wellbeing became almost a national pastime. With publications such as the British Medical Journal and Lancet freely accessible to the everyday reader, common medical terms and diagnoses were readily absorbed by the public. In particular, the nineteenth century saw the rapid rise of the ‘nervous illness’ – sicknesses which had no apparent physical cause, but had the capacity to cripple their victims with (among other things) delirium, tremors and convulsions. As part of the rich social life of this popular class of disorder, writers of fiction within the nineteenth century also participated in the public dialogue on the subject. Authors such as Charlotte Brontë, Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle all constructed narratives involving nervous sufferers, particularly hypochondriacs and victims of brain fever. Despite writing in a wide variety of genres ranging from Gothic to realist, the roles played by the illnesses within the texts of these authors remain a vital feature of the plot, either as a hindrance to the protagonists (by removing key players from the plot at a critical moment) or a method of revealing deeper aspects of their character. Nervous illnesses carried with them social stigmas: men could be rendered feminine; women could be branded recklessly passionate or even considered visionaries as ideas about the nerves, the supposed seat of emotion and passion, brought into sharp relief the boundaries between physical and mental suffering, and physical and spiritual experiences.  The central aim of this thesis is to examine the cultural understanding of nervous illness and how nineteenth-century texts interacted with and challenged this knowledge. It focuses on how nineteenth-century authors of different genres – particularly the Gothic, sensation and realist genres – use the common convention of nervous illness – particularly hypochondria and brain fever – to develop their protagonists and influence the plot. Through comparisons between literary symptoms and those recorded by contemporary sufferers and their physicians, this thesis analyses the way that the cultural concept of nervous illness is used by four principal Victorian authors across a range of their works, looking at how hypochondria and brain fever function within their plots and interact with gender and genre conventions to uphold and subvert the common tropes of each. Whether it aids or hinders the protagonist, or merely gives the reader an insight into their personality, nervous illness in the Victorian novel was a widely used convention which speaks not only of the mindset of the author, but also of the public which so willingly received it.</p>

scholarly journals The Scientific Supernatural in the Fin de Siècle Novel

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Kathryn Magaña
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Scientific Validity ◽  
Material World ◽  
Scientific Legacy ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Understanding Of Science

<p>Nineteenth-century literary criticism has mainly focused on lasting scientific advancements, at the expense of a more comprehensive history, when examining the legacy of science in fiction. Yet there were many sciences that were considered plausible during the nineteenth century which have since been disproven and the ideas relegated to the realms of pseudo-science. This thesis examines novels by Bram Stoker, Marie Corelli, Florence Marryat, and Arthur Machen with attention to the scientific supernatural. Throughout this thesis, the term “scientific supernatural” will be used to reference mid- to late nineteenth-century scientific investigations conducted by various types of scientists into the supernatural and the set of phenomena that were the subject of these investigations, regardless of the twenty-first century status of the topics under investigation. Phenomena such as mesmerism, clairvoyance, and Spiritualism, which seem to be supernatural in their interactions with material aspects of the world or the supernatural realm, were studied by scientists with the understanding that they were engaged in scientific pursuits. “Scientific supernatural” is, therefore, intended to represent the scientific inquiries into the supernatural and only the areas of study that were, for a time at least, accepted as scientific by some scientists and often by society at large, evident in scientific periodicals, books, and personal documents, into the fin de siècle. Many supernatural elements in literature at the end of the nineteenth century are representations of phenomena that were being investigated by contemporary scientists and, as such, are represented within fiction as having a claim to scientific validity. This term represents the status of the various phenomena in the historical moment where the supernatural realm seemed to be the next place for science to explore.  This thesis is separated into an introduction and three chapters that discuss different depictions of the scientific supernatural. The Introduction surveys criticism of the scientific supernatural and of science in connection with late nineteenth-century literature to lay a foundation of the historical context for this science and establish a gap in current criticism of science and the fin de siècle novel. Chapter 1 explores two different representations of Spiritualism and the way the authors use science to support the worldviews taught through their fiction. The novels discussed in Chapter 2 deal with observed effects of the supernatural in the material world and the problem of explaining these occurrences when science had no certain explanation for them. Chapter 3 examines fictional depictions of scientific experimentation that represent the author’s hope that scientific evidence of the supernatural will be uncovered. In each case, the authors suggest there is something yet to be discovered which will allow science to explain the supernatural as definitely real and capable of interacting with the material world.  Fictional representations of the scientific supernatural such as those discussed throughout this thesis reveal a wider understanding of science at the fin de siècle than has previously been addressed in literary criticism. As such, this thesis suggests the need for a broader critical understanding of science, and scientific potential, that mirrors that of fin de siècle English conception of science to more fully inform the scientific legacy left in fiction of the time.</p>

The Irish Fin de Siècle

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Markey
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Work Stress ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Arts And Crafts ◽  
Arts And Crafts Movement ◽  
Cultural Activity ◽  
War Fiction ◽  
Irish Drama ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Land War

This chapter provides a survey of the range of cultural activity in Ireland during the late decades of the nineteenth century. It points to the importance of Irish writers in defining the Victorian fin de siècle, and the Irish backgrounds of many famous fin-de-siècle writers, especially women. Attention is given to specific forms of Irish writing, such as Land War fiction and experimental Irish drama and a distinct genre of Irish children’s fiction, as well as activities promoted by Irish revivalists, such as the Irish Arts and Crafts Movement, the Feis Coil Association and traditional Celtic games. Throughout this body of work, stress is placed regeneration and a looking to the future, rather than on degeneration and endings.

The Belgian Revival and Japonisme in Scotland

2019 ◽  
pp. 88-142
Author(s):  
Michael Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Japanese Culture ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Traditional Cultures

Fin-de-Siècle Scotland is frequently associated with the ‘kailyard’ movement and, by extension, with small towns, insularity and sentimentality. Using Scottish writers and artists’ thorough engagement with Belgian and Japanese culture as case studies, this chapter reveals how deeply international and cross-cultural Scottish writing and art was in the late-Victorian period. I argue that Scottish cultural revivalists looked to these two nations to help them build counter-hegemonic connections that allowed them to defend the value of smaller nations and traditional cultures. Part of the reason some cultural revivalists looked to Japan and Belgium specifically was that these nations’ artists offered examples of how cultural revivalist work could fuse with modernity, rather than simply reject it. I focus on examining William Sharp’s self-conscious attempts to bring the decadent energy of La Jeune Belgique into Scotland to help resist metro-centric thinking, before illustrating the marked impact of Maurice Maeterlinck on Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald. The Glasgow School played a key role nourishing Scotland’s Japanese connection, and we often find japonisme fusing with Scottish forms in their work.

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