scholarly journals What Piketty Knew (But Dared Not Ask Henry James): Fin-de-Siècle American Capitalism and Queer Resistance in The Ambassadors

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-160
Author(s):  
Misun Yun
Keyword(s):  
Henry James ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
American Capitalism ◽  
Fin De Siècle

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.

Controversies in the Periodical Press

2021 ◽  
pp. 164-205
Author(s):  
Stefano Evangelista
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Henry James ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Periodical Press ◽  
Literary Periodicals ◽  
The World ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Class Privilege

This chapter argues that the periodical medium played a fundamental role in the construction of literary cosmopolitanism as a discursive phenomenon. It focuses on two periodicals launched in the fin de siècle: the American Cosmopolitan and the European Cosmopolis. The commercially oriented and middle-brow Cosmopolitan promoted cosmopolitanism as a female-gendered social identity linked to class privilege, as testified by the serialization of Elizabeth Bisland’s round-the-world trip in 1889. However, it also interrogated the cosmopolitan tendencies of modern American literature embodied by the writings of Henry James. By contrast, the short-lived Cosmopolis was a high-brow periodical that aimed to revive Kant’s Enlightenment ideal and Goethe’s notion of world literature. It was committed to multilingualism and to fighting nationalism. The chapter closes with an analysis of Cosmopolis as a competitor to the iconic 1890s English literary periodicals, the Yellow Book and The Savoy.

Coda

2020 ◽  
pp. 275-278
Author(s):  
Ushashi Dasgupta
Keyword(s):  
Henry James ◽  
Installation Art ◽  
Thomas Hardy ◽  
Bram Stoker ◽  
Wilkie Collins ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
George Gissing ◽  
Fin De Siècle

The Coda discusses the changing representations of tenancy after Dickens’s death in 1870. It moves through the fin de siècle, offerings readings of novellas by Wilkie Collins and tracing Dickens’s legacy in these texts. Collins’s novellas use rented space as a prism through which to address broad concerns about modernity. The Coda briefly notes the role of rented space in works by George Gissing, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, and Bram Stoker. It concludes by shifting its focus to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and considers examples from literature, film, television, and contemporary installation art, including Tatzu Nishi’s 2002 project, Villa Victoria.

Fictions

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Blacklock
Keyword(s):  
Henry James ◽  
Joseph Conrad ◽  
Reciprocal Relationship ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Literary Fiction ◽  
Narrative Fiction ◽  
Ford Madox Ford ◽  
Production Of Space ◽  
George Macdonald ◽  
Fin De Siècle

Chapter 6 considers how cultural conceptions of space had been shifted by higher spatial thought in its various forms and how this was reflected in the popular and literary fiction of the fin de siècle. Investigating the production of space in fin de siècle literature, it focuses on embodiment, the senses, and particularly narrative voice and mood. A newly configured spatiality that owes its conception to higher space becomes a driving force behind certain techniques of narrative fiction in the period and plays directly into Modernism. This chapter builds on earlier observations on things as mediating objects and on the philosophy of space to develop a widescreen vision of higher space that explores its reciprocal relationship with colonial space in the fiction of H.G. Wells, George MacDonald, George Griffith, Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, Henry James, H.P. Lovecraft, and others.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document