SoSe 23: Endings and Beginnings : Fin-de-Siècle Literature in Context
Stephan Karschay
Information for students
Sprache: Die Seminarsprache ist Englisch.
Studienleistungen: Regelmäßige und aktive Teilnahme, Lektüre aller im Seminar diskutierten Texte, seminarbegleitende Studienleistungen (wie z.B. response paper, Präsentation, Expertengruppe).
Modulprüfung: abschließende Hausarbeit.
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The subject of our seminar will be the literature and culture of the Victorian fin de siècle (ca. 1880-1900) in Britain, a short, but central, period in British cultural history that marked the end of one epoch and hailed the beginning of another. Uncomfortably situated between two centuries, it was long regarded as being ‘lost in transition’, alternatively interpreted as the tail-end of the Victorian age or as a period foreshadowing the Modernist onslaughts of the early twentieth century. In line with these assumptions, late-nineteenth century cultural commentators can largely be divided into two camps: those that feared the prospect of a dying age, envisioning not only a fin de siècle, but an imminent fin du globe, and those that delightedly greeted the dawning century as an exhilarating time of new beginnings. Twenty-first-century critics have righty emphasised the period’s modernity by pointing to the many cultural configurations and developments that can be perceived as palpably novel at the fin de siècle: the ‘New Woman’ questioned traditional conceptions of femininity; ‘New Men’ (such as aesthetes and decadents) relished a lifestyle far removed from bourgeois notions of masculinity; developments in foreign policy and rebellions in select areas of the British Empire resulted in an aggressive ‘New Imperialism’; a sensational form of newspaper reportage came to be labelled the ‘New Journalism’; and literary reviews registered a ‘New Realism’ in fiction by George Gissing, Arthur Morrison and George Moore. In this seminar we will read a wide variety of texts (scientific, literary, visual and expository) to appreciate the sheer variety of cultural concerns at the Victorian fin de siècle. We will critically engage with the many intellectual issues (concerning race, gender, sexuality, technology, science and the arts) which challenged the ‘Victorian frame of mind’. Our approach will be of the textual-historicist variety: rather than summarising the cultural strands of the period through recourse to secondary material, students will be encouraged to analyse a large amount of primary texts by journalistic, scientific, political and imaginative writers as diverse as H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, W. T. Stead, Charles and William Booth, Arthur Symons, Sarah Grand, ‘Mona Caird’, Andrew Lang, Joseph Chamberlain, William Morris, T. H. Huxley, F. W. H. Myers, Havelock Ellis and Karl Pearson. Furthermore, we will read at least one full-length novel, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) and relate it to the rich cultural context provided by the fin de siècle.
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Zur Anschaffung: Ledger, Sally, and Roger Luckhurst, eds. The Fin de Siècle. A Reader in Cultural History, c. 1880-1900 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). [ISBN 9780198742791]
Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray [1891], ed. Robert Mighall (London: Penguin, 2003). [ISBN 978-0141439570]
Zur Einführung geeignet: Ledger, Sally, and Roger Luckhurst. “Reading the ‘Fin de Siècle’”. Introduction. The Fin de Siècle: A Reader in Cultural History, c. 1880-1900, ed. S. L. & R. L. (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 2000. xiii-xxiii.
Potolsky, Matthew. “Fin de Siècle.” Victorian Literature and Culture 46:3/4 (2018): 697-700.
Marshall, Gail, ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Fin de Siècle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
A list with further reading will be provided at the beginning of term.
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12 Class schedule
Regular appointments