scholarly journals ‘As though Miles of Ocean did not Separate us’: Print and the Construction of a Transatlantic Free Love Community at the Fin de Siècle

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-109
Author(s):  
Sarah L Jones
Keyword(s):  
Collective Identity ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Free Love ◽  
Radical Group ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Transnational Connections ◽  
History Of ◽  
National Boundaries

Abstract This article argues that British and American free lovers – radical sexual reformers committed to the cause of ‘sexual freedom’ – came together through print to build a transatlantic community at the fin de siècle. Challenging existing narratives that characterize free love as isolated or incoherent, it argues that through print free lovers from Britain and America were able to forge links with each other, and to construct an important, coherent collective identity that transcended national boundaries. In doing so it makes two major interventions. First, it provides unique new insights into the history of free love in both the British and American contexts, placing a new focus on often overlooked transnational connections and exchanges that helped to shape late nineteenth-century free love campaigns. Second, it encourages historians to rethink the ways we look for and make sense of cohesive international reform communities more broadly in this period. By exploring how a small, radical group like the free lovers were able to cohere through processes of contestation and negotiation played out entirely in print, this article will show that, where necessary, print was enough for transatlantic reformers to construct common identities and negotiate coherent reform ideas. As such, it argues that historians of fin-de-siècle social reform should look again at the print culture of other contemporary reformers otherwise labelled divided, isolated, or marginalized to look for threads of cohesion, cooperation, and compromise.

The Emergence of the Fourth Dimension

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Blacklock
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Henry James ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Fourth Dimension ◽  
Higher Dimensional ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
History Of

The idea of the fourth dimension of space has been of sustained interest to nineteenth-century and Modernist studies since the publication of Linda Dalrymple Henderson’s The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art (1983). An idea from mathematics that was appropriated by occultist thought, it emerged in the fin de siècle as a staple of genre fiction and grew to become an informing idea for a number of important Modernist writers and artists. Describing the post-Euclidean intellectual landscape of the late nineteenth century, The Emergence of the Fourth Dimension works with the concepts derived from the mathematical possibilities of n-dimensional geometry—co-presence, bi-location, and interpenetration; the experiences of two consciousnesses sharing the same space, one consciousness being in two spaces, and objects and consciousness pervading each other—to examine how a crucially transformative idea in the cultural history of space was thought and to consider the forms in which such thought was anchored. It identifies a corpus of higher-dimensional fictions by Conrad and Ford, H.G. Wells, Henry James, H.P. Lovecraft, and others and reads these closely to understand how fin de siècle and early twentieth-century literature shaped and were in turn shaped by the reconfiguration of imaginative space occasioned by the n-dimensional turn. In so doing it traces the intellectual history of higher-dimensional thought into diverse terrains, describing spiritualist experiments and how an extended abstract space functioned as an analogue for global space in occult groupings such as the Theosophical Society.

GENDER IN MODERN EUROPE: CRIME AND VIRTUE Gender and crime in modern Europe. Edited by Margaret L. Arnot and Cornelie Usborne. London: UCL Press, 1999. Pp. xv+288. ISBN 1-85728-746-0. £14.99. Breaking the codes: female criminality in fin-de-siècle Paris. By Ann-Louise Shapiro. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996. Pp. vi+265. ISBN 0-8047-2693-0. £10.95. Reign of virtue: mobilizing gender in Vichy France. By Miranda Pollard. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Pp. xxi+285. ISBN 0-226-67350-2. £15.95.

2002 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 953-965
Author(s):  
KRISTEN STROMBERG CHILDERS
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Conflicts ◽  
The Past ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Gender And Crime ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Louis Xvi

The past decade has seen a virtual explosion in scholarship about issues of gender in the history of modern Europe. Historians have taken up topics from the fall of Louis XVI during the Revolution to the role of women in fascism to demonstrate the pivotal importance that matters of sexual difference have made in shaping politics, culture, and society in the last centuries. Scholars have realized that interpretations of class dynamics, work relations, collective action, and nations at war, for example, look considerably different and are far more complex when attention is paid to gender. Where the study of women in the past was once relegated to the backwaters, now courses on women's history and gender have taken a permanent place in most university curricula. Histories that include women have moved from ‘her-story’ (crudely, the history of individual women and their accomplishments) to analyses that use gender as an interpretative prism through which to view larger social and political transformations.The three books under review participate in this larger movement toward integrating the perspectives of gender into major issues of European history that have been researched by historians before, but from a standpoint that these authors find lacking. Margaret Arnot and Cornelie Usborne, as editors of a collection of essays on gender and crime, wish to correct some of the assumptions about women and crime that have been ignored by historians who focus mostly on more historically conspicuous male criminals. Ann-Louise Shapiro uses the trials of criminal women in late nineteenth-century Paris as ‘lightning rods’ that illuminate the social, political, and cultural conflicts of the fin-de-siècle.

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.

Syphilitic General Paralysis

1893 ◽  
Vol 39 (165) ◽  
pp. 217-224
Author(s):  
M. J. Nolan
Keyword(s):  
Life Histories ◽  
The Other ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Short Life ◽  
General Paralysis ◽  
Generic Term ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
History Of ◽  
Vexed Question

At the present time, when our fin de siècle knowledge of “general paralysis” enables us to recognize under that generic term many types of the disorder, and when the relation between it and syphilis continues a rather vexed question, little apology is needed for introducing to notice the following cases. They illustrate unmistakably some of the instances in which syphilis is solely responsible for what. Is termed by Dr. Savage” A process of degeneration which ultimately produces the ruin we recognize as general paralysis.”∗ Whatever may be hereafter formulated from the present evolutionary crisis in the history of the disorder there can be but little doubt that syphilis will be one of its most intimate and important relations. The story of its methods is briefly sketched in the following two short life-histories—in one asserting itself in the offspring of its victims by right of impure heredity, in the other carrying death direct into the vital centres by the force of its malignant virus.

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>

Vernon Lee: Slow Serialist and Journalist at the Fin de Siècle

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Linda K. Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Vernon Lee ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
History Of ◽  
Periodical Publication

To expand understanding of imbricated journalism and high aestheticism at the fin de siècle, this essay examines Vernon Lee's journalism and slow essay serials, a form spread over space (viz., different periodicals) and marked by irregular temporal issue of installments before finding new cohesion when retroactively constructed as a book. Lee's prolific periodical publication, especially her aesthetic criticism, is rarely approached as journalism. Newly available letters and Lee's negotiations with editors clarify the occluded history of Lee's journalism and her slow essay serials, a distinctive serial form at the fin de siècle, which this article conceptualizes in closing.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Dana Seitler
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Literary Fiction ◽  
Economic Equality ◽  
Aesthetic Form ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Aesthetic Ideas

This book explores the pivotal role that various art forms played in American literary fiction in direct relation to the politics of gender and sexuality at the turn of the century. I track the transverse circulation of aesthetic ideas in fiction expressly concerned with gender and sexuality, and I argue that at stake in fin-de-siècle American writers’ aesthetic turn was not only the theorization of aesthetic experience, but also a fashioning forth of an understanding of aesthetic form in relation to political arguments and debates about available modes of sociability and cultural expression. One of the impulses of this study is to produce what we might think of as a counter-history of the aesthetic in the U.S. context at three (at least) significant and overlapping historical moments. The first is the so-called “first wave” of feminism, usually historicized as organized around the vote and the struggle for economic equality. The second is marked by the emergence of the ontologically interdependent homosexual/heterosexual matrix—expressed in Foucault’s famous revelation that, while the sodomite had been a temporary aberration, at the fin de siècle “the homosexual was now a species,” along with Eve Sedgwick’s claim that the period marks an “endemic crisis in homo-heterosexual definition.”...

scholarly journals Charles Kingsley’s Hypatia, Visual Culture and Late-Victorian Gender Politics

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 240-263
Author(s):  
Victoria Mills
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Gender Politics ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Numerous Book ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Book Illustrations ◽  
Multi Media ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Abstract Charles Kingsley’s Hypatia or New Foes with an Old Face was first published in Fraser’s Magazine in 1852, but was reissued in numerous book editions in the late nineteenth century. Though often viewed as a novel depicting the religious controversies of the 1850s, Kingsley’s portrayal of the life and brutal death of a strong female figure from late antiquity also sheds light on the way in which the Victorians remodelled ancient histories to explore shifting gender roles at the fin de siècle. As the book gained in popularity towards the end of the century, it was reimagined in many different cultural forms. This article demonstrates how Kingsley’s Hypatia became a global, multi-media fiction of antiquity, how it was revisioned and consumed in different written, visual and material forms (book illustrations, a play, painting and sculpture) and how this reimagining functioned within the gender politics of the 1880s and 1890s. Kingsley’s novel retained a strong hold on the late-Victorian imagination, I argue, because the perpetual restaging of Hypatia’s story through different media facilitated the circulation of pressing fin-de-siècle debates about women’s education, women’s rights, and female consumerism.

Before Bandung: Afro-Asian Cross-referencing and Comparative Racialization

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 599-622
Author(s):  
Tanya Agathocleous ◽  
Janet Neary
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Racial Uplift ◽  
Missed Opportunities ◽  
Racial Solidarity ◽  
Transnational Connections ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Comparative Racialization

Abstract This essay analyzes the rhetorical and political connections between African American and South Asian critiques of race and empire in the century leading up to the Bandung conference in 1955. Specifically, we trace the way “caste” emerges as a key rhetorical term in the mid-to-late nineteenth century for linking the oppressions of race, slavery, and its aftermath in the United States to those of caste and empire in India. Building on work by Nico Slate and Antoinette Burton, we identify a strategic citational practice we call Afro-Asian cross-referencing, which the writers under consideration use to advance anti-racism in sometimes very local contexts. Focusing on the dynamic periodical culture of the period, our study analyzes anti-caste sentiment as an expression of cross-racial solidarity uniting anti-colonial movements in India with racial uplift movements in the United States. Because the concept of “Afro-Asian solidarity” first took hold at the Bandung conference of 1955 and the Non-Aligned Movement that it helped to originate, the phenomenon itself remains most visible in relation to this later period and the Cold War context. By shifting focus to an earlier moment in the history of Afro-Asian solidarity, we illuminate the work that the idea of caste did in defining strategic transnational connections—as well as missed opportunities for connection—later in the century.

Rinuccini the craftsman: A view of his L'Arianna

1999 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 75-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bojan Bujić
Keyword(s):  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
As If ◽  
The Craftsman

Like her crown, which according to the story shines in a constellation, L'Arianna as a work of art shimmers as a distant and mysterious object, and the loss of Monteverdi's score, apart from the famous lament, makes it one of the great ‘if onlys’ of the history of music. Artistic responses to L'Arianna range wide. In Gabrielle d'Annunzio's novel Il fuoco, Stellio Effrena and his group of aesthetes in fin de siècle Venice embrace Monteverdi, and Arianna's lament in particular, as a home-grown antidote to Wagner, elevating ‘Lasciatemi morire’ to the status of an Italian precursor of the ‘Liebestod’. Recently Alexander Goehr gave a new lease of life to Ottavio Rinuccini's libretto in his opera Arianna, first performed in September 1995, and, as if not to desecrate a hallowed object, he included in the opera a recording of the opening of Monteverdi's surviving fragment sung by Kathleen Ferrier.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document