Fictions of Loss in the Victorian Fin de Siecle: Identity and Empire - Softcover

Arata, Stephen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521101271 ISBN 13: 9780521101271

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2009

Synopsis

It has been widely recognised that British culture in the 1880s and 1890s was marked by a sense of irretrievable decline. Fictions of Loss in the Victorian Fin de Siècle 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 attention to fin de siècle representation 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 siècle.

About this title

Review:

"...Arata shows us clearly why loss and decay recur so insistently in late-Victorian writing." Christopher Lane, Victorian Studies

"His is a solid contribution to studies of late Victorian culture." Joseph W. Childers

Book Description:

Fictions of Loss in the Victorian Fin de Siècle 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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0521101271
• ISBN 13: 9780521101271
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 248