SoSe 22: Aestheticism and Decadence
Stephan Karschay
Zusätzl. Angaben / Voraussetzungen
Regelmäßige und aktive Teilnahme, Lektüre aller im Seminar diskutierten Texte, seminarbegleitende Studienleistungen (wie z.B. response paper, Gruppenpräsentation, Expertengruppe), abschließende Seminararbeit. Die Seminarsprache ist Englisch; die Primärtexte werden im englischen Original bzw. in englischer Übersetzung unter Berücksichtigung des nicht-englischen Originals gelesen.
SchließenKommentar
From the Latin decadere, ‘to fall away’, the term ‘decadence’ is used for artists of the late-nineteenth century who consciously positioned themselves in opposition to the cultural mainstream of the Victorian bourgeoisie. Hugely influenced by French writers such as Théophile Gautier, Paul Verlaine and Charles Baudelaire, the Decadent movement in Britain indulged in a celebration of subjects which had hitherto been marginalised in the arts: sexuality, intoxication, deviance and disease became central to a strange cult of beauty which many middle-class contemporaries regarded as perverted symptoms of degeneration. Staunchly opposed to the ideological underpinnings of nineteenth-century realism, the Decadents cherished the superficial and self-referential quality of artefacts which neither purported to refer to an external reality nor to have any utilitarian value. In this respect, the Decadent movement was closely related to the earlier school of Aestheticism, which had first turned the literary motto l’art pour l’art into a veritable philosophy of life. This seminar is intended as a broad introduction to Aestheticism and Decadence in fin-de-siècle Britain. Therefore we will look at the movements’ main representatives of the 1890s (such as Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley, Max Beerbohm, Arthur Symons, Joris-Karl Huysmans and William Morris) and their contributions to literature, journalism, book illustration and interior design. Furthermore, we will examine the Aestheticist and Decadent origins in nineteenth-century France as well as the contributions of writers (such as Algernon Charles Swinburne and Walter Pater) and artists (such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones) who had wrought their influence in Britain some decades before Aestheticism and Decadence developed their full momentum in the 1890s. We will also probe the problematic gender politics at the heart of Aestheticist/Decadent culture which – despite the overt hostility towards middle-class society and its repressive mores – often relied on a misogynistic representation of women as beautiful objects or dangerous femmes fatales. Finally, we will ponder the significance and legacy of decadence for modernism and the avant-garde.
SchließenLiteraturhinweise
Zur Anschaffung (in exakt dieser Ausgabe): Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray [1891], ed. Robert Mighall (London: Penguin, 2003). [ISBN: 978-0141439570]
Zur weiteren Anschaffung empfohlen : Karl Beckson, ed.,Aesthetes and Decadents of the 1890’s: An Anthology of British Poetry and Prose (Chicago, IL: Academy Chicago, 1981). [ISBN: 978-0897330442]
Zur Einführung geeignet : Karl Beckson, “Introduction”, in K.B., ed.., Aesthetes and Decadents of the 1890’s: An Anthology of British Poetry and Prose (Chicago, IL: Academy Chicago, 1980), xxi-xliv. Alex Murray, “Decadent Histories”, in A.M., ed., Decadence: A Literary History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 1-17.
Schließen14 Termine
Regelmäßige Termine der Lehrveranstaltung