Symons, Arthur William (1865–1945)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kostas Boyiopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Literary Critic ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
French Symbolism ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Story Writer

Arthur Symons was a British poet, art and literary critic, memoirist, playwright, short story writer, and editor. He was born in Milford Haven, Wales, on 28 February 1865, the son of Cornish parents: Reverend Mark Symons (1824–1898), a Wesleyan Methodist minister, and Lydia Pascoe (1828–1896). Symons was the foremost exponent of Decadence and the leading promoter of French Symbolism in Britain. An enthused socialite, he manoeuvred successfully through London artistic circles and the Paris avant-garde. In 1901 he married Rhoda Bowser (1874–-1936) and in his later years he retreated to Island Cottage, Wittersham, Kent. In 1908–1910 he suffered a mental collapse in Italy, moving in and out of asylums; he chronicles this experience in Confessions: A Study in Pathology (1930). He recovered and resumed his literary career until his seventies, mainly regurgitating themes of his fin-de-siècle period. He died on 22 January 1945.

scholarly journals JACK LONDON, THE SOCIALIST DREAM OF A YOUNG POET.

2020 ◽  
pp. 93-112
Author(s):  
Jesús Isaías Gómez López
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Jack London ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Socialist Movement ◽  
Story Writer ◽  
Personal Decision ◽  
Complete Poems

Jack London began writing poetry in May 1897. From then on, the lyrical process, in the form of odd, single lines, stanzas and complete poems, would be present throughout his career as a novelist, essayist and short-story writer. His most ambitiously prolific period was between 1897 and 1899, and by the age of twenty-three he had already composed and published most of his poems. London’s incursion into poetry was not fortuitous, but instead was a deliberate, personal decision to enter what he hoped would be a lucrative profession. This began in May 1897, with the poem “Effusion”, which launched what was to be a short but vibrant poetic career. London’s poetry is replete with a wide variety of issues and captures the most intimate and existential expression of a young man who aspired to make poetry the literary and vocational tool with which to become a crucial figure in the promising socialist movement of the fin de siècle.

Heroism in the Age of Consumerism: The Emergence of a Moral Don Quixote in John Updike’s “A & P”

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 75-85
Author(s):  
Zakarya Bezdoode ◽  
Eshaq Bezdoode
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Short Stories ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Shopping Mall ◽  
Moral Decision ◽  
Literary Critic ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Moral Problems ◽  
Story Writer

This paper analyzes John Updike’s short story “A & P” in the light of Max Weber’s notion of moral decision-making. A prominent contemporary American story-writer and literary critic, Updike has devoted his fiction to subjects’ rational and moral problems in the contemporary consumerist society. Updike’s lifelong probing into the middle classes’ lives is a body of fiction that raises questions about determinism, moral decision, and social responsibility, among others. “A & P” is a revealing example of such fiction and one among Updike’s most frequently anthologized short stories. The story, titled after a nationwide American shopping mall in the early twentieth century, investigates the possibility of decision-making within consumerist society. This paper demonstrates how Updike’s portrayal of his characters’ everyday lives reveals the predicament of intellectual thinking and moral decision-making in a consumerist society and warns against the loss of individual will in such societies.

Symons at the Seaside

2018 ◽  
pp. 242-255
Author(s):  
Nick Freeman
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The North ◽  
Story Writer

The poet, critic and short story writer Arthur Symons (1865–1945) was an inveterate traveller who wrote frequently about the Channel and the North Cornish coasts in poetry and prose. During the 1890s and 1900s, he was at the forefront of the pre-modernist avant-garde, and was an important conduit for the dissemination of decadent and impressionist art in England. As a landscape writer, he blended the quasi-Impressionist methods of painters such as Whistler with the decadent’s concern with the privileged subjectivity of the artist. This chapter examines the implications of such practices for his treatment of Cornwall, Sussex and Dieppe – including in neglected later writings such as ‘Sea Magic’ (1920).

Theatre in the Provinces at the Fin de Siècle: Beyond Outcast London

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jo Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Performance Culture ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines the relationship between performance culture in two regional cities in the British Midlands—Nottingham and Birmingham—as compared to that in the metropolis, London. It compares reactions to plays by Ibsen and Pinero in these locales, providing evidence to suggest that regional audiences were knowledgeable about London culture, and that they were less shocked by avant-garde theatre than might be assumed.

From Hérodias to Hérodiade: Massenet’s Idiosyncratic Take on the Salomé Myth

Adaptation ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-58
Author(s):  
Phaedra Claeys
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
Third Republic ◽  
Political Context ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Grand Opera

AbstractMassenet’s Hérodiade (1881) is today one of the lesser-known variations of the Salomé myth. Although based on Flaubert’s Hérodias (1877) and written and premiered at the height of the narrative’s popularity, the opera displays some peculiar deviations from both Flaubert’s tale and other, especially fin-de-siècle, renderings of the myth. By situating Hérodiade’s departures from Flaubert’s short story within both the framework of operatic conventions and the broader context of the opera’s genesis, this article highlights Hérodiade’s status as a self-contained rendering, rather than a mere dramatic rewriting of the story—let alone an unfaithful adaptation. In doing so, three main elements that played an essential role in the process of (re)creation are brought to attention: the conventions of grand opera, Massenet’s own aesthetics and interpretation of the tale, and the impact of the socio-political context of France’s Third Republic on the opera’s development.

The Final Days of Edgar Allan Poe: Clues to an Old Mystery Using 21st Century Medical Science

2010 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger A. Francis
Keyword(s):  
Cause Of Death ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Edgar Allan Poe ◽  
Medical Science ◽  
Literary Critic ◽  
Journal Articles ◽  
Documented Information ◽  
American Poet ◽  
Story Writer ◽  
Magazine Articles

This study examines all documented information regarding the final days and death of Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849), in an attempt to determine the most likely cause of death of the American poet, short story writer, and literary critic. Information was gathered from letters, newspaper accounts, and magazine articles written during the period after Poe's death, and also from biographies and medical journal articles written up until the present. A chronology of Poe's final days was constructed, and this was used to form a differential diagnosis of possible causes of death. Death theories over the last 160 years were analyzed using this information. This analysis, along with a review of Poe's past medical history, would seem to support an alcohol-related cause of death.

When a Bestselling Author and a West End Actress Made a Spiritualist Performance: Collaboration, Networks and Theatre at the Fin de Siècle

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Hindson
Keyword(s):  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Collaboration Networks ◽  
Theatrical Production ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Celebrity Culture ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Role Of Women ◽  
Leisure Industry ◽  
Theatrical Culture

This chapter offers a detailed reconstruction of the performance of a piece of avant-garde drama to highlights the prominent role of women in theatrical culture at the time, as both dramatists and actresses, and the professional opportunities that were then opening for them. It also shows the importance of a growing celebrity culture, and the complexity of the interactions between theatre, politics, religion, gender and theatrical production. It shows that even avant-garde theatre, concerned with such archetypal fin-de-siècle concerns as the occult and mysticism, were still deeply implicated in, and made possible by, a growing leisure industry.

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