ESH7030 Aestheticism and Fin-de-Siècle Literature
Primary Reading:
Please read some of Swinburne's poetry from the recommended text in preparation for our first class. You should also read several of the longer texts like Walter Pater's Studies in the History of the Renaissance, H. Rider Haggard's She, Sarah Grand's The Heavenly Twins, and Hardy's The Well-Beloved. Please acquire the texts listed below, preferably in the recommended editions (also available in QM Library). You can reduce costs by checking amazon.co.uk or abe.co.uk for secondhand copies.
Algernon Swinburne, Algernon Charles Swinburne, ed. Catherine Maxwell, Everyman's Poetry Library (Orion Publishing, 1997). May be hard to find new but can still be bought secondhand or cheaply as a kindle edition and contains all the poems you need. A more expensive but good option is the Penguin Classics edition of Swinburne's Poems and Ballads edited by Kenneth Haynes (2000). All of Swinburne's poems are also available (without annotation) on the excellent website 'The Algernon Charles Swinburne Project'.
Walter Pater, Studies in the History of the Renaissance, ed. Matthew Beaumont, World's Classics (Oxford University Press, 2010)
Walter Pater, Appreciations with an Essay on Style. Any paperback facsimile reprint edition from amazon.co.uk
Vernon Lee, Hauntings and Other Fantastic Tales, eds. Catherine Maxwell and Patricia Pulham (Broadview Press, 2006) OR Vernon Lee, The Virgin of the Seven Daggers and Other Stories, ed. Aaron Worth (Penguin, 2022)
Rider Haggard, She, ed. Daniel Karlin (Oxford World's Classics, 1991)
Oscar Wilde, 'The Decay of Lying' and The Importance of Being Earnest. Any edition containing both texts such as the Everyman edition (1996) or the Complete Works (Collins).
Daughters of Decadence: Women Writers of the Fin de Siècle, ed. Elaine Showalter (Virago, 1993).
Sarah Grand, The Heavenly Twins, intr. Carol A. Senf (Ann Arbor: Univ of Michigan, 1992), or the cheaper facsimile reprint by BiblioBazaar. (Be careful of other versions available on Amazon, which are invariably of poor quality.) A free digital version of the novel can be downloaded from archive.org
Thomas Hardy,
The Well-Beloved (1897), NOT
The Pursuit of the Well-Beloved (1892). Use one of the following editions: Oxford: World's Classics, 1986; London: Everyman, Dent, 1997; Ware: Wordsworth Classics, 2000; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2007.
Secondary Reading:
While you are not required to buy any of the following texts, all of which are available in QM Library, it is strongly recommended that you look at least two or three suggestions in preparation for the module.
Harold Bloom, Chs 1-8 of Yeats (London and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970). See especially Ch 2: 'Late Victorian Poetry and Pater'.
Harold Bloom, Pater', in Figures of Capable Imagination (New York: Seabury Press, 1976). Also available as 'The Crystal Man', the introduction to Bloom's Selected Prose of Walter Pater (New York: Signet Classics; paperback) a good selection if you can get hold of it.
Bram Djikstra, Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de- Siècle Culture (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1986)
Linda Dowling, 'The Decadent and the New Woman', Nineteenth-Century Fiction 33 (1979), 434-53
Linda Dowling, Language and Decadence in the Victorian Fin de Siècle (Princeton University Press, 1986).
Stefano Evangelista, British Aestheticism and Ancient Greece: Hellenism, Reception, Gods in Exile (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)
Ian Fletcher, Decadence and the 1890s (London: Edward Arnold, 1979)
Frank Kermode, Ch 1 & 6 of Romantic Image (Ark paperbacks/RKP, 1986)
Sally Ledger, The New Woman: Fiction and Feminism at the Fin de Siècle (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997)
Gail Marshall ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Fin de Siècle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)
Camille Paglia, Chapters 18-21 of Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991)
Elaine Showalter, Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin de Siècle (London: Virago, 1990)
You may also find it useful to look at Strangeness and Beauty: An Anthology of Aesthetic Criticism 1840-1910, 2 vols, eds. Eric Warner and Graham Hough, Vol. I: Ruskin to Swinburne, Vol. II: Pater to Symons (Cambridge University Press, 1983). These volumes are available in QM Library, but can be obtained secondhand from amazon.co.uk
