What is fin de siècle in literature?
In its simplest definition, “fin de siècle” refers to the end of a century, yet at the end of the 19th century in Britain, the term did not just refer to a set of dates, but rather a whole set of artistic, moral, and social concerns.
What is fin de siècle sensibility?
fin de siècle, (French: “end of the century”) of, relating to, characteristic of, or resembling the late 19th-century literary and artistic climate of sophistication, escapism, extreme aestheticism, world-weariness, and fashionable despair.
What are fin de siècle fears?
Greg Buzwell considers the way the novel reflects the fears that haunted late 19th-century society – fears of immigration, sexual promiscuity and moral degeneration.
How does fin de siècle relate to Gothic literature?
Literally meaning “end of century”, fin de siècle Gothic refers specifically to the Gothic literature of the last two to three decades of the 19th century. There is a pervading sense of instability and unease; an age was coming to an end and things would change, not necessarily for the better.
What is fin de siecle?
Fin de Siècle is a French phrase meaning ‘end of century’ and is applied specifically as a historical term to the end of the nineteenth century and even more specifically to decade of 1890s. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
Is Dracula fin de siecle?
True, Dracula is a fin-de-siècle novel and deals with the turbulent paradigmatic shift from the Victorian to the modern, and Stoker, by creating the lecherous vampire and his band as the doppelgängers of the sexually sterile and morally pretentious bourgeois types (who are, in fact, inclined to lascivious joys).
What does the term fin de siecle mean?
end of century
Fin de Siècle is a French phrase meaning ‘end of century’ and is applied specifically as a historical term to the end of the nineteenth century and even more specifically to decade of 1890s. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
What did Victorians fear?
In the 19th century, the British feared invasion by the French, terrorists and even aliens. Mike Ashley explains how these concerns were reflected in literature.
Who coined the term fin de siecle?
Who are some famous fin de siecle authors?
The fin de siècle obsession with the occult and spiritualism became a subject of popular fiction and that continued well into the 1900s. Algernon Blackwood’s The Willows (1907) for example, features unidentified beings who are close to breaking into the human world. Hughes, William, David Punter, and Andrew Smith.
What does fin de siecle mean in Gothic literature?
Glossary of the Gothic: Fin-de-Siècle. Literally meaning “end of century”, fin de siècle Gothic refers specifically to the Gothic literature of the last two to three decades of the 19th century. There is a pervading sense of instability and unease; an age was coming to an end and things would change, not necessarily for the better.
What was the fin de siecle at the time?
But the fin de siècle—both at the time and even more so in current critical debate—encompasses a broader set of concerns, social and political, that often stand in tension with aestheticism. Two good examples of this divergence are the rising interest in literary naturalism and the emergence of the New Woman.
What did Linda Dowling write about fin de siecle?
Dowling, Linda. Language and Decadence in the Victorian Fin de Siècle. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986. A rigorous work from the foremost literary scholar of the decadent movement that places philology and style at the heart of an investigation of British decadence.