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.

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.

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>

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.

Gothic Aesthetics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Smith
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sensation Fiction ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Spiritual World ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines the relationship between late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century gothic, the sensation fiction of the middle decades of the nineteenth century, fin-de-siècle gothic works and modernism. It argues that in the late nineteenth century a distinctive, but implicit, gothic aesthetic developed which was characterised by a concern with divided selves, fragmented narratives and science. It also shows that this aesthetic was distinguished by optimistic narratives about adaptability and the presence of a mystical or spiritual world.

Reading the Gothic and Gothic readers

Interventions ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Smith
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
The Self ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Self Reflection ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Relationship

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.

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