In the NinetiesUniversity of Chicago Press, 23.10.1989 - 199 Seiten John Stokes's lively study is an exercise in interdisciplinary criticism inspired by the decade it observes, the decade of Wilde, Shaw, Beardsley, and Sickert. No longer dismissed as merely transitional between the Victorian and the Modern, the 1890s have now come to be recognized as unique—a period of dramatic engagement between high culture and popular forms, one medium and another, art and life. Spurning fixed boundaries, Stokes relates the controversial topics of the day—the status of the "New Journalism," the "degenerative" influence of Impressionist painting, the dubious morality of the music hall, the urgent need for prison reform, and the prevalence of suicide—to primary literary texts, such as The Ballad of Reading Gaol, The Importance of Being Earnest, Jude the Obscure, and Portrait of a Lady. And in the process, he explores crucial areas of sociological and psychological interest: criminality, sexuality, madness, and "morbidity." Each of the book's six chapters opens with a look at the correspondence columns of daily newspapers and goes on, with a keen eye for the hidden link, to pursue a particular theme. Locations shift from Leicester Square and the Thames embankment to the Normandy coast and the Paris morgue and feature, along with famous names, a lesser known company of acrobats, convicts, aesthetes, "philistines," and mysterious suicides. Nearly a century later, John Stokes's unrivalled knowledge of how the arts actually functioned in the nineties makes this book a major contribution to modern cultural studies. |
Inhalt
ITS THE TREATMENT NOT THE SUBJECT | 33 |
PRUDES ON THE PROWL | 53 |
OUR DARK PLACES | 95 |
TIRED OF LIFE | 115 |
ASTOUNDING DISCLOSURES | 145 |
Notes | 167 |
193 | |
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Häufige Begriffe und Wortgruppen
acrobat aesthetic Albert Chevalier Alhambra amateurs Arthur Symons artist Aubrey Beardsley audience August Ballad ballet Beardsley Beerbohm Chant Clark contemporary correspondence columns Crackanthorpe criminal critic D. S. MacColl Daily Chronicle dance dancers death decade Degas Degeneration Ellmann Empire English Ernest essay expression Fiction fin de siècle George H. W. Massingham Henry human Ibid ideal ideas Impressionist insanity intellectual interest interview James January John Joseph Pennell journalism journalist letter literary literature Living Pictures Lombroso London MacColl's modern mood moral morbid morgue music-hall never newspaper nineties Nordau novel October Oscar Wilde Oxford painting Pall Mall Gazette papers Paris Pennell Philistine Podgers poem poet poetry political Press prison Promenade published readers reform Review September 1893 sexual Sickert social society sometimes Spectator Spender St James's stage Star Stevenson story suicide Symons's T. P. O'Connor Theatres things thought University Unknown Quantity Victorian Westminster Gazette Wilde's woman writers wrote Zola