Fictions of Loss in the Victorian Fin de Siecle: Identity and Empire PDF
Preview Fictions of Loss in the Victorian Fin de Siecle: Identity and Empire
This page intentionally left blank It has been widely recognized that British culture in the 1880s and 1890s was marked by a sense of irretrievable decline. Fictions of loss in the Victorian fin de siecle explores the ways in which that perception of loss was cast into narrative, into archetypal stories which sought to account for the culture's troubles and perhaps assuage its anxieties. Stephen Arata pays close atten- tion to fin-de-siecle representations of three forms of decline — national, biological, and aesthetic - and reveals how late-Victorian degeneration theory was used to "explain" such decline. By examining a wide range of writers - from Kipling to Wilde, from Symonds to Conan Doyle and Stoker - Arata shows how the nation's twin obsessions with decadence and imperialism became intertwined in the thought of the period. His account offers new insights for students and scholars of the fin de siecle. FICTIONS OF LOSS IN THE VICTORIAN FIN DE SIECLE FICTIONS OF LOSS IN THE VICTORIAN FIN DE SIECLE STEPHEN ARATA University of Virginia CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521563529 © Cambridge University Press 1996 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1996 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Arata, Stephen. Fictions of loss in the Victorian fin de siecle / Stephen Arata. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0 521 56352 6 1. English fiction - 19th century - History and criticism. 2. Degeneration in literature. ». Literature and society - Great Britain - History - 19th century. 4. Politics and literature - Great Britain - History - 19th century. 5. Regression (Civilization) in literature. 6. Loss (Psychology) in literature. 7. Social change in literature. 8. Social problems in literature. 9. Culture in literature. I. Title. PR8978.D373A73 1996 823'.809353 - dc20 96-3489 CIP ISBN 978-0-521-56352-9 hardback Transferred to digital printing 2008 For Lisa "Happiness is this, he thought. It is this."
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