The Fin-de-Si�cle World (Routledge Worlds) - Hardcover

3.83

6 ratings by Goodreads

9780415674133: The Fin-de-Si�cle World (Routledge Worlds)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0415674131 ISBN 13: 9780415674133

Publisher: Routledge, 2014

This comprehensive and beautifully illustrated collection of essays conveys a vivid picture of a fascinating and hugely significant period in history, the Fin de Si�cle. Featuring contributions from over forty international scholars, this book takes a thematic approach to a period of huge upheaval across all walks of life, and is truly innovative in examining the Fin de Si�cle from a global perspective. The volume includes pathbreaking essays on how the period was experienced not only in Europe and North America, but also in China, Japan, the Middle East, Latin America, Africa, India, and elsewhere across the globe.

Thematic topics covered include new concepts of time and space, globalization, the city, and new political movements including nationalism, the "New Liberalism", and socialism and communism. The volume also looks at the development of mass media over this period and emerging trends in culture, such as advertising and consumption, film and publishing, as well as the technological and scientific changes that shaped the world at the turn of the nineteenth century, such as the invention of the telephone, new transport systems, eugenics and physics. The Fin-de-Si�cle World also considers issues such as selfhood through chapters looking at gender, sexuality, adolescence, race and class, and considers the importance of different religions, both old and new, at the turn of the century. Finally the volume examines significant and emerging trends in art, music and literature alongside movements such as realism and aestheticism.

This volume conveys a vivid picture of how politics, religion, popular and artistic culture, social practices and scientific endeavours fitted together in an exciting world of change. It will be invaluable reading for all students and scholars of the Fin-de-Si�cle period.

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Review:

*A CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of 2015*

"Saler has put together a prodigious, strikingly thorough collection of essays focused on the period around 1900...This overlapping―of the political, national, imperial, social, cultural, intellectual, scientific, spiritual, and artistic―is a good thing because it demonstrates the interactions between the various aspects of fin-de-si�cle culture. A reader could hardly ask for a better one-volume treatment of current research. This collection of essays deserves the intense attention of anyone interested in the fin-de-si�cle or in a broad understanding of cultural and global history of the near past. Nonspecialists will particularly appreciate the thorough index. Summing Up: Highly recommended." - J. Rogers, Louisiana State University Alexandria, USA, CHOICE Review

"The Fin-de-Siecle World is an important and timely addition to what has become an interdisciplinary field, focusing on the "crucible of modernity" in late 19th century Europe. The welcome innovation of this volume is to extend our understanding of the fin-de-siecle phenomenon by embedding it within a global and transnational context beyond the epicenters of Paris and London. This book should be of great interest to scholars of European and global modernity." - Mary Gluck, Brown University, USA

"Michael Saler has edited an extremely comprehensive work that covers almost every aspect of the Fin de Siecle that students should want to know about. The perspective is global and multi-disciplinary; the contributors are all experts in their respective fields. It should become a standard work for all those interested in the period." - Alan Sked, London School of Economics, UK

"The book's global reach is very welcome... a splendid mosaic." - Margaret Menninger, Texas State University, USA

“It is not only an intellectual pleasure to read but maps out the global fin-de-si�cle in a way that makes it eminently suitable material for teaching the history of this period. For the non-specialist, almost every chapter offers gems of insight and interesting information that greatly contribute to the better understanding of the multiple ramifications of a topic. The visuals of the volume, which includes more than 50 illustrations with many different from the customary ones, are also very rich and rewarding for those looking to enhance their visual material in a course. With this set of strengths, The Fin-de-Si�cle World, will definitely stand out as the best introduction to its topic for many decades to come.” - Alexander Vari, Marywood University, Scranton

"Saler’s collection is expertly edited, cohesive and coherent. The era under consideration was one characterized by anxiety, by ambiguity, by a kind of grappling with rapid transformations across all aspects of social and individual experience. Saler and his authors capture this beautifully. The book does indeed make a world."

Janine Utell, ELT

About the Author:

Michael Saler is Professor of History at the University of California at Davis. His publications include As If: Modern Enchantment and the Literary Prehistory of Virtual Reality (2012); The Avant-Garde in Interwar England: ‘Medieval Modernism’ and the London Underground (1999) and editor, with Joshua Landy, of The Re-Enchantment of the World (2009).

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