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"Decadence, Degeneration, and the End: Studies in the European Fin de Siáecle provides a multidisciplinary overview of one of the more compelling cultural phenomena of the later nineteenth century. Degeneration and decay, both of bodies and civilizations, as well as illness, death, bizarre sexuality, and general morbidity, all became essential aspects of fin-de-siáecle consciousness, manifesting themselves in a wide variety of literary genres, visual art forms and social practices. The studies range fromthe Mediterranean world to Scandinavia and Russia, with special emphasis on the artists and writers of France and Britain, and on subjects as diverse as Oscar Wilde, August Strindberg, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Aubrey Beardsley, the Nordic Decadents, the perceived decline of Latin civilization, Gabriele D'Annunzio, Max Nordau, Charles Cottet's paintings of mourning widows, Stefan George, the consumptive Russian artist Mariia Iakunchikova, advertising illustrations glorifying morphine addicts, decadent sexological theory, Salome in all of her outrageous incarnations, and the heat-death of the universe"--
List of contents
Introduction: The Empire at the End of Decadence; Christopher Nissen and Marja Härmänmaa PART I: THE TWILIGHT WORLD: DECADENT VISIONS OF WORLD, SOCIETY, AND CULTURE 1. Thermal Degeneration: Thermodynamics and the Heat-Death of the Universe in Victorian Science, Philosophy, and Culture; Mason Tattersall 2. A Regenerative Decadence or a Decadent Regeneration: Challenges to Darwinian Determinism by French, Spanish, and Latin American Writers in the Fin-de-Siècle; Natalia Santamaría Laorden 3. Late Antiquity as an Expression of Decadence in the Poetry of Constantine P. Cavafy and Stefan George; Anastasia Antonopoulou 4. Decadence and Regeneration: Oscar Wilde's Fairy Tales as a Tool for Social Change; Magali Fleurot PART II: THE SEDUCTION OF SICKNESS 5. Decadent Tropologies of Sickness; Pirjo Lyytikäinen 6. Consuming and Consumed: Woman as Habituée in Eugène Grasset's Morphinomaniac; Abigail Susik 7. Decadence, Melancholia, and the Making of Modernism in the Salome Fairy Tales of Strindberg, Wilde, and Ibsen; Kyle Mox PART III: DECADENCE AND THE FEMININE 8. Mariia Iakunchikova and the Roots of Decadence in Late-Nineteenth Century Russian Modernism; Kristen M. Harkness 9. The Spectral Salome: Salomania and Fin-de-Siècle Sexology and Racial Theory; Johannes Burgers 10. "For the Strong-Minded Alone": Evolution, Female Atavism, and Degeneration in Aubrey Beardsley's Salomé; Gülru Çakmak PART IV: TWO STUDIES OF DEATH 11. Death at Sea: Symbolism and Charles Cottet's Subjective Realism; Maura Coughlin 12. The Seduction of Thanatos: Gabriele D'Annunzio and the Decadent Death; Marja Härmänmaa
Report
"Marja Härmänmaa and Christopher Nissen's Decadence, Degeneration, and the End: Studies in the European Fin de Siècle is a highly original collection of essays that successfully brings new issues, new authors, and new artists into the orbit of decadent culture. A particular strength is the book's richly comparative, multidisciplinary approach: the essays range over British, French, Belgian, Spanish, Scandinavian, German, Greek, Italian, and Russian culture, while also extending discussion of decadence beyond literature and into the fields of art and science. A significant contribution to a topic of growing importance." - David Weir, Professor of Comparative Literature, The Cooper Union, USA and author of Decadence and the Making of Modernism and Decadent Culture in the United States: Art and Literature against the American Grain, 1890 1926
"This extraordinary collection of essays brings a new geographical and intellectual scope to our notion of decadence and its close relatives, degeneracy and aestheticism. Through history and science, visual and literary arts, from France and Britain to Russia, from the Nordic countries to Italy, Spain and Latin America, this volume incorporates an unprecedented range of materials. All scholars of the period will immediately recognise why this is essential reading, and the editors are to be congratulated on their vision in assembling a collection at once so varied and so focused." - David Ayers, Professor of Modernism andCritical Theory, University of Kent at Canterbury, UK
"The fin-de-siècle decadence is a complex and multifaceted cultural phenomenon that reached deeply into all aspects of European culture and the arts. This excellent volume offers a much needed reassessment of a number of key aesthetic and thematic preoccupations of decadent culture by means of a transnational and interdisciplinary perspective. The focus on notions of decadence, degeneration, and death sheds light onto the dark and pessimistic response of artists to modern life and science, while arguing forcefully for a reappraisal of such notions as fundamental to the call for regeneration and renewal in political, literary, and artistic terms which we normally associate with modernism." - Giuliana Pieri, Reader in Italian and the Visual Arts, Holloway University of London, UK
