scholarly journals Narcissus and femme fatale

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Χριστίνα Σεραφείμ
Keyword(s):  
Oscar Wilde ◽  
Vladimir Nabokov ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Femme Fatale ◽  
Frank Wedekind ◽  
Ludwig Tieck ◽  
Joseph Von Eichendorff ◽  
Fin De Siècle

Λολίτα, Λόλα, Λουλού: Κυρίες με τέτοιου είδους υποκοριστικά ονόματα τις συναντάει κανείς συνήθως ως πλανεύτρες ακαταμάχητης ομορφιάς στη Λογοτεχνία, την Τέχνη και τον Κινηματογράφο. Και όμως υφίσταται το ερώτημα εάν υπάρχει πραγματικά μια κάποια τέχνη της αποπλάνησης ή εάν η ομορφιά – όπως λέει ο λαός – εξαρτάται αποκλειστικά από τη ματιά του παρατηρητή. Μια απάντηση σε αυτό το ερώτημα υπόσχεται να δώσει η ανάλυση των ακόλουθων έργων του Ρομαντισμό, της περιόδου του Fin de Siècle και της Λογοτεχνίας και του Κινηματογράφου του 20ού αιώνα, με θέμα την αποπλάνηση. Τα έργα έχουν ως κεντρική ηρωίδα μία γυναίκα πλανεύτρα και έναν – συνήθως άντρα – πλανεμένο ήρωα. Κοινό χαρακτηριστικό σχεδόν όλων των ηρωίδων είναι ότι κατέχουν έκαστες τεχνικές αποπλάνησης: μπορούν να τραγουδάνε, να χορεύουν και να ποζάρουν άριστα. Οι ρομαντικές διηγήσεις είναι οι εξής: "Der Runenberg" (1804) του Ludwig Tieck, "Das Marmorbild" (1818) του Joseph von Eichendorff και δύο διηγήσεις από το ρεπερτόριο του E.T.A. Hoffmann: "Das öde Haus" (1817) και "Der goldne Topf" (1813/1814). Παραδείγματα από την περίοδο του Fin de Siècle είναι τα δράματα "Salome" (1893) του Oscar Wilde και "Lulu" (1913) του Frank Wedekind. Ως σύγχρονο παράδειγμα επιλέχθηκε το μυθιστόρημα σκάνδαλο και κλασικό έργο της παγκόσμιας λογοτεχνίας "Lolita" (1955) του Vladimir Nabokov. Ταινίες καλτ που δεν πρέπει να λείπουν από τη φιλμογραφία μίας εργασία περί γυναικείας αποπλάνησης είναι: "Der Blaue Engel" (1930) του Joseph von Sternberg, "Orpheus" (1939) του Jean Cocteaus και "Carmen" (1983) του Carlos Saura. Κεντρική ιδέα της διατριβής είναι ότι η θηλυκότητα καθ’ εαυτή – και ακόμα περισσότερο η αποπλανητική – δεν υφίσταται, αλλά αποτελεί ένα κατασκεύασμα, μία φαντασίωση, μία προβολή ή είναι ακόμα και αποτέλεσμα σκηνοθεσίας. Αρχική ιδέα είναι ότι οι θηλυκές μορφές λειτουργούν συνήθως ως καθρέφτισμα του ανδρικού πόθου αποτελώντας μονάχα προβολές επιθυμίας και φόβου. Στην αιτιολόγηση του ερευνητικού στόχου η φιγούρα του νάρκισσου αποκτάει ένα διπλό ρόλο: από τη μία το μοτίβο αντικατοπτρίζει την αυτο-ποθούμενη ματιά και τη σχετιζόμενη κατασκευή της θηλυκότητας, από την άλλη ο νάρκισσος λειτουργεί ως σύμβολο μιας τέχνης που παρατηρεί τον εαυτό της και έτσι πολλαπλασιάζεται.

The Response of the Late Victorian Feminist Press to Same-Sex Desire Controversies

2019 ◽  
pp. 542-554
Author(s):  
Molly Youngkin
Keyword(s):  
Oscar Wilde ◽  
The Other ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Sexual Practices ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Editorial Bias ◽  
Heterosexual Women ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Race And Sexuality ◽  
Amy Levy

Molly Youngkin’s essay investigates the heterosexism of a fin de siècle feminist newspaper, the Women’s Penny Paper (1894–99, later retitled the Women’s Herald and the Woman’s Signal), highlighting its treatment of three controversies: the Oscar Wilde trials, the death of poet Amy Levy, and the emergence of Sappho as a model of lesbian new womanhood. When the paper did address these controversies it ‘reshaped narratives about this [same-sex] desire to fit its own heterosexist agenda,’ responded in a disapproving way, or avoided a discussion of sexuality entirely (p. 543). The overall effect of this editorial bias was to pursue an ‘overarching agenda of advocating for heterosexual women’ and to reinforce social purity debates about ‘the effects of men’s sexual practices on heterosexual women and their families’ (p. 544). These feminist papers thus constructed the ‘other’ in ways that upheld restrictive conventions of race and sexuality while claiming to be vehicles of progressive thought.

Decadence

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raphaël Ingelbien
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
French Literature ◽  
Oscar Wilde ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Walter Pater ◽  
Late 19Th Century ◽  
Art Historians ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Art For Art's Sake

Decadence was a word used to refer, often disparagingly, to late-19th-century European writers and artists whose credo of ‘‘art for art’s sake’’ (Dictionary of Art Historians) went hand in hand with an open disdain for morality and for the values of their own societies. Often associated with modern French literature and its influence, decadent tendencies were observed in many different countries. In England, its main representatives were Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) and various figures who were inspired by French examples and by the aestheticism of Walter Pater (1839–1894). Its main features were a cult of beauty, refinement and artificiality; a fascination for the paradoxical, the bizarre, the exotic and the perverse; and an iconoclastic attitude towards dominant values. While manifestations of decadence did earn a place in fin-de-siècle London culture, the phenomenon did not survive the spectacular fall of Oscar Wilde in 1895, but some of its ideas and attitudes point forward to modernism.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Weir
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Urban Geography ◽  
Oscar Wilde ◽  
Charles Baudelaire ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Period 1880 ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Nineteenth Century France ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Aesthetic Expression

The Introduction first considers the etymological and historical meanings of decadence. Different interpretations of the word “decadence” point to historical decline, social decay, and aesthetic inferiority. Decadence today may be best understood as the aesthetic expression of a conflicted attitude toward modernity, which first arose in nineteenth-century France and is best expressed by the author Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867). Decadence then “travelled” to London, where Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) became the preeminent decadent writer. Other metropolitan centers that made up part of the urban geography of decadence during the fifty-year period (1880–1930) of decadence’s peak were fin-de-siècle Vienna and Weimar Berlin.

scholarly journals Portugal's First Queer Novel: Rediscovering Visconde de Vila-Moura's Nova Safo (1912)

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna M. Klobucka
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
Oscar Wilde ◽  
Cultural Relevance ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Critical Approaches ◽  
Marginal Status

This study seeks to recover the novel Nova Safo (1912) by Visconde de Vila-Moura from the marginal status to which it has been consigned in Portuguese literary history by arguing for its momentous cultural relevance as Portugal’s first queer novel. Given the extremely limited number and scope of existing critical approaches to the text, my reading is oriented by a reparative strategy that aims, first and foremost, to remedy its precarious status as an archival object. I describe the novel's inchoate and cluttered collection of references, images, and storylines as a countercultural scrapbook of queer feeling, ruled by an antiquarian sensibility, whose structures of cohesion belong less to the realm of formal aesthetics than to the sphere of homophilic affective epistemology. Further, I chart Nova Safo's intersecting gestures of transitive embodiment—transnational, transgender, and transracial—by discussing the novel’s mournful evocation of three recently departed icons of fin-de-siècle literary culture: Oscar Wilde, Renée Vivien, and João da Cruz e Sousa.

scholarly journals De perseguidas a fatais: personagens femininas, sexo e horror na literatura do medo brasileira

Opiniães ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (6-7) ◽  
pp. 51
Author(s):  
Júlio França ◽  
Daniel Augusto P. Silva
Keyword(s):  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Femme Fatale ◽  
Fin De Siècle

As temáticas sexuais e a figura feminina são sistematicamente exploradas pelas narrativas de horror. Desde a literatura gótica no século XVIII, a mulher é retratada em situações associadas à morte e ao medo. Nessas histórias, é recorrente o tópos da damsel in distress, isto é, a presença de uma personagem feminina que é vítima dos mais diversos tipos de violência, física e/ou psicológica. Já no século XIX, as representações da mulher na literatura se tornam mais diversificadas. No Romantismo, ganha força a femme fatale e o sexo é encarado como conflito entre alma e corpo. Se durante a literatura romântica tal mulher é idealizada e constitui uma ameaça emocional, no fin-de-siècle ela representa um perigo eminentemente físico. No final do XIX, ela encarna a busca por independência e a contestação do domínio masculino. Este trabalho pretende apresentar um panorama dessa transformação na literatura do medo brasileira, tomando como demonstração as seguintes obras: Noite na taverna (1855), de Álvares de Azevedo; A ilha maldita (1879), de Bernardo Guimarães; “Palestra a horas mortas” (1898), de Medeiros e Albuquerque; “O bebê de tarlatana rosa” (1910), de João do Rio; e “Noites brancas” (1920), de Gastão Cruls.  

“The Rage of Caliban”

2019 ◽  
pp. 46-61
Author(s):  
Michael Davidson
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Femme Fatale ◽  
High Modernism ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Otto Weininger ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
Bodily Difference ◽  
A Site

Chapter 2 focuses on works that mark the transition from fin de siècle aestheticism to works of high modernism. The primary focus is the role of embodiment in modernist aesthetics, specifically as it appears in music. The chapter looks at several works based on Velázquez’s Las Meninas (1656) in which the figure of the court dwarf represented in the painting becomes a site for anxieties about bodily and sexual difference. Alexander Zemlinsky’s opera Der Zwerg (The Dwarf) from 1922 is the primary text, based on Oscar Wilde’s story “The Birthday of the Infanta” (1891). The libretto for Zemlinsky’s opera by George Klaren transforms Wilde’s story of recognition and betrayal into an allegory of dysgenic characterology, based on the work of Otto Weininger. What Wilde perceived as a story about the noble soul beneath the grotesque body, Zemlinsky transformed into a eugenicist allegory of man’s fatal alliance with the femme fatale. As a work that embodies elements of late Romantic chromaticism as well as modernist atonality, Der Zwerg is a site for studying musical representation of bodily difference.

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