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Author: Frederick White Publisher: Manchester University Press ISBN: 1526102129 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 397
Book Description
Early in the twentieth century, Russia was experiencing a decadent period of cultural degeneration just as science was developing ways to identify medical conditions which supposedly reflected the health of the entire nation. Leonid Andreev, the leading literary figure of his time, stepped into the breach of this scientific discourse with literary works about degenerates. The spirited social debates on mental illness, morality and sexual deviance which resulted from these works became part of the ongoing battle over the definition and depiction of the irrational, complicated by Andreev’s own publicised bouts with neurasthenia. This book examines the concept of pathology in Russia, the influence of European medical discourse, the development of Russian psychiatry, and the role that it had in popular culture, by investigating the life and works of Andreev. It engages the emergence of psychiatry and the role that art played in the development of this objective science.
Author: Max Nordau Publisher: ISBN: 9781614276852 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 582
Book Description
2014 Reprint of 1895 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. "'Degeneration' is one of the most important documents of the fin de siecle, the years between the 1880s and 1900 when the robust views of the nineteenth century clashed with the heightened sensibilities of a searching and disillusioned generation."--George L. Mosse. In "Degeneration" Max Nordau attacks so-called degenerate art and comments on the effects of a range of social phenomena of the period, such as rapid urbanization and its perceived effects on the human body. Nordau begins his work with a 'medical' and social interpretation of what has created this Degeneration in society. Nordau divides his study into five books. In the first book, Nordau identifies the phenomenon of fin de siecle in Europe. He sees it as first being recognized, though not originating, in France, 'a contempt for the traditional views of custom and morality.' He sees it as a sort of decadence, a world-weariness, and the willful rejection of the moral boundaries governing the world. He uses examples from French periodicals and books in French to show how it has affected all elements of society. Nordau also accuses society of becoming more and more inclined to imitate what they see in art. He sees in the fashionable society of Paris and London that "Every single figure strives visibly by some singularity in outline, set, cut or color, to startle attention violently, and imperiously to detain it. Each one wishes to
Author: Olga Matich Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press ISBN: 0299208834 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 356
Book Description
The first generation of Russian modernists experienced a profound sense of anxiety resulting from the belief that they were living in an age of decline. What made them unique was their utopian prescription for overcoming the inevitability of decline and death both by metaphysical and physical means. They intertwined their mystical erotic discourse with European degeneration theory and its obsession with the destabilization of gender. In Erotic Utopia, Olga Matich suggests that same-sex desire underlay their most radical utopian proposal of abolishing the traditional procreative family in favor of erotically induced abstinence. 2006 Winner, CHOICE Award for Outstanding Academic Titles, Current Reviews for Academic Libraries Honorable Mention, Aldo and Jean Scaglione Prize for Studies in Slavic Languages and Literatures, Modern Language Association “Offers a fresh perspective and a wealth of new information on early Russian modernism. . . . It is required reading for anyone interested in fin-de-siècle Russia and in the history of sexuality in general.”—Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, Slavic and East European Journal “Thoroughly entertaining.”—Avril Pyman, Slavic Review
Author: Koenraad W. Swart Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media ISBN: 9401196737 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 282
Book Description
"It was the best oftimes. It was the worst oftimes. " The famous open ing sentence ofCharles Dickens' Tale oJ Two Cities can serve as a motto to characterize the mixture of optimism and pessimism with which a large number of nineteenth-century intellectuals viewed the con dition of their age. It is nowadays hardly necessary to accentuate the optimistic elements in the nineteenth-century view of history; many recent historians have sharply contrasted the complacency and the great expectations of the past century with the fears and anxieties rampant in our own age. It is often too readily assumed that a hundred years ago all leading thinkers as weil as the educated public were addicted to the cult of progress and ignored or minimized those trends of their times that paved the way for the catastrophes of the twentieth century. In the nineteenth century the intoxicating triumphs of modern science undeniably induced the general public to believe that pro gress was not an accident but a necessity and that evil and immo rality would gradually disappear. Yet fears, misgivings, and anxieties were not as exceptional in the nineteenth century as is often imagined. Such feelings were not restricted to a few dissenting philosophers and poets like Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, 'Dostoevsky, Baudelaire, and Nietzsche.
Author: Jimmie E. Cain, Jr. Publisher: McFarland ISBN: 0786424079 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 216
Book Description
In Victorian England, a marked fear of Russia prevailed in the government and the public. As a result of the Crimean War and other Russian threats to the British empire, the English mind was haunted by a shadowy enemy of barbarous Eastern invaders. The influence of this Russophobia is evident in the works of Bram Stoker, who responded to the Russian challenge to British Imperial hegemony through the character of Dracula, a primitive and menacing Eastern figure destroyed by warriors pledged to the Crown. The text investigates the role of Russophobia in Stoker's fiction, particularly his novels Dracula and The Lady of the Shroud. It offers historical information about Russophobia and the Crimean War, considers Slavic and Balkan connections, and analyzes Stoker's vampire themes. The resulting work shows how two nations' histories intertwine in an unexpected literary avenue. Illustrations include numerous political cartoons of the era.
Author: Stefano Evangelista Publisher: Peter Lang UK ISBN: 9783034322607 Category : Decadence (Literary movement) Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
This volume explores the themes of degeneration and regeneration in fin-de-siècle Italian culture. Some contributions reflect on the poetics of decadence, while others focus on significant figures of the period and their literary, critical and artistic work, providing analysis from both national and comparative perspectives.
Author: Max Simon Nordau Publisher: DigiCat ISBN: Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 1086
Book Description
Degeneration is a book by Max Nordau which was published in two volumes. Within this work, he attacks what he believed to be degenerate art and comments on the effects of a range of social phenomena of the period, such as rapid urbanization and its perceived effects on the human body. Nordau believed degeneration should be diagnosed as a mental illness because those who were deviant were sick and required therapy.
Author: Barbara Spackman Publisher: Cornell University Press ISBN: 1501723308 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 237
Book Description
Barbara Spackman here examines the ways in which decadent writers adopted the language of physiological illness and alteration as a figure for psychic otherness. By means of an ideological and rhetorical analysis of scientific as well as literary texts, she shows how the rhetoric of sickness provided the male decadent writer with an alibi for the occupation and appropriation of the female body.