ENL 6256 THEORIZING DECADENCE: IMAGES OF LATE-VICTORIAN MYTHOLOGIES

COURSE TEXTS (Books available at Goering’s-Bageland):

John Berger, Ways of Seeing (Penguin)
Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan (Dover)
Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol and Other Poems (Dover)
Aubrey Beardsley, The Best Works of Aubrey Beardsley (Dover)
Six photocopy supplements—from Custom Copies
 

SCHEDULE (subject to modest negotiation)

Week  1
Introduction — background
 

Week  2  [Packet #1 ; c. 170 pages]

Stephen Arata, “Strange Cases, common fates, degeneration and fiction in the Victorian fin de siècle,” from Fictions of Loss in the Victorian Fin de siècle (1996), 11–32, 186–92.

Chamberlin and Gilman, “Preface,” “Degeneration: An Introduction,” from Degeneration: The Dark Side of Progress, eds. Edward J. Chamberlin and Sander L. Gilman (1985), vii–xiv.

Sander L Gilman, “Sexology, Psychoanalysis, and Degeneration: From a Theory of Race to a Race to Theory,” from Degeneration: The Dark Side of Progress, eds. Chamberlin and Gilman (1985), 72–96.

Sandra Siegel, “Literature and Degeneration: The Representation of ‘Decadence,’” from Degeneration: The Dark Side of Progress , eds. Chamberlin and Gilman (1985), 199–219.

Karl Beckson, “Preface to Second Edition,” “Preface,” “Introduction,” from Aesthetes and Decadents of the 1890s (1965; Chicago: Academy Chicago, 1981), vii–xliv.

Ian Small, “Introduction,” from The Aesthetes: A Sourcebook (London: Routledge, 1979), ix–xxix.

Stutfield, Hugh E. M.  “Tommyrotics.”  Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 157.956 (June 1895): 833-45.

Walter Pater —“Preface” and “Conclusion,” from The Renaissance (1873), vii–xv, 233–39.

Arthur Symons — Criticism: “Preface: Being a Word on Behalf of Patchouli,” from Silhouettes (2nd edition, 1896), 95–97; “Preface to 2nd Edition of London Nights ” (1897), 165–67; “Introduction” and “Conclusion” to The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1896–99), v–vii, 1–9, 170–75.
 

Week 3 [Packet #1, c. 50 pages; plus Berger, Ways of Seeing, 166 pp.; plus c. 25 website images]

Geoffrey Harpham, “Chapter One: Formation, Deformation, and Reformation: An Introduction to the Grotesque,” from On The Grotesque: Strategies of Contradiction in Art and Literature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1982), 3–22 (plus 8 illustrations).

John Ruskin — from “Of Truth of Space,” Modern Painters I (1843): 327–35; from “The Naturalist Ideal,” and from “The Grotesque Ideal,” Modern Painters III (1856): 111–19, 130–35.

Ella D’Arcy — “The Death Mask,” The Yellow Book 10 (July 1896): 265–74.

John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London: Penguin, 1972)

Week 4  [Packet #2, c. 140 pp.; Best of Beardsley, c. 50 pp; plus c. 15 additional website images]

Ian Fletcher, “A Grammar of Monsters,” ELT 30.2 (1987): 141–63.

Historical images of Fatal Women (on my website: http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/snod/OtherImages.html ): Caravaggio, Judith & Holofernes (c.1598), Salome receives the Head of Saint John the Baptist (1607-10); Gentileschi, Judith and her Maidservant (1612-13), Judith Slaying Holofernes (c. 1611-12) [click on small image] Judith Slaying Holofernes, enlarged (c. 1611-12) [click on small image], Judith Slaying Holofernes (c. 1620); Giorgione, Judith (1504) [click on small image]; Klimt, Judith I (1901), Judith I [another version] (1901), Judith II (1909), Judith II [another version] (1909); Mantegna, Judith and Holofernes (1495), Judith and Holofernes (1495-1500) [grisaille]; Rubens, Judith with the Head of Holofernes (c. 1616), Judith with the Head of Holofernes (1620-22).

Theodore Wratislaw — “To Salome at St. James’s,” The Yellow Book 3 (October 1894): 110–11.

Aubrey Beardsley — Salome pictures from Best of Beardsley (may get better detail on my website, http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/snod/19thImages.html ), pp. 18, 24–39), pp. 18, 24–39. 

Symons — “Aubrey Beardsley” (1898), 87–106;  “Studies in Strange Sins (After Beardsley’s Designs)” (1920), 273–85.

Chris Snodgrass, “Decadent Mythmaking: Arthur Symons on Aubrey Beardsley and Salome,” Victorian Poetry 28, No. 3-4 (Autumn-Winter 1990): 61–109.
——BIBLIOGRAPHY DUE——

Arthur Symons — Criticism: “Music Halls and Ballet Girls” (1890s; unpublished until 1977), pp. 109–114; “The World as Ballet,” from Studies in Seven Arts (1906), 244–46.

Symons — Poetry: “Emmy,” “Javanese Dancers,” “Prologue: In the Stalls,” “To a  Dancer,” “Renée,” “Nora on the Pavement,” “Violet: La Mélinte : Moulin Rouge,” “Violet: At the Ambassadeurs,” “Stella Maris,” “Hallucination: I,” “Hallucination: II,” “Bianca: Bianca,” “Bianca: Benedictine,” “Epilogue: Credo.”

Ernest Dowson — Poetry: “In Preface: For Adelaide,” “Vita summa brevis ,” “Nuns of the Perpetual Adoration,” “My Lady April,” “ Ad Domnulam Suam ,” “Yvonne of Brittany,” “ Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae ,” “You would have understood me had you waited,” “Vain Hope,” “Vain Resolves,” “Villanelle of His Lady’s Treasures,” “Cease smiling, Dear! a little while be sad,” “Epigram,” “Beyond,” “Carthusians,” “Dregs,” “Venite Descendamus.”

Dowson — Fiction : “A Case of Conscience,” from Century Guild Hobby Horse (April 1891) and Dilemmas (1895), pp. 29–49; “The Princess of Dreams,” from Decorations: In Prose and Verse (1899), pp. 114–15.

High Victorian Art (on my website: http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/snod/19thImages.html ): Hughes, The Long Engagement (1854-59), April Love (1855-56), Home from the Sea (1856-63), Good Night (1865-66), The Heavenly Stair (1887-88), Overthrowing of the Rusty Knight (1908); Egg, Travelling Companions (1862); Bouguereau, Le Printemps [The Return of Spring] (1866), The Abduction of Psyche (1895); Burne-Jones, Pygmalion & the Image: The Heart Desires (1868-78), Pygmalion & the Image: The Hand Refrains (1868-78); Pygmalion & the Image: The Godhead Fires (1868-78); Pygmalion & the Image: The Soul Attains (1868-78); The Annunciation (1879), (1884); Draper, A Water Baby (1900); Dicksee, Harmony (1877), Chivalry (1885), The End of the Quest (1921); Hunt, The Hireling Shepherd (1851), The Awakening Conscience (1853), The Lady of Shalott (1889-92) [Manchester]; Ingres, The Source (1820–56); Leighton, The Bath of Psyche (c. 1890), Perseus and Andromeda (1891-94), Flaming June (1895); Long, The Babylonian Marriage Market (1875), The Chosen Five (1885); Manet, Nana (1877); Millais, The Woodman’s Daughter (1951), The Blind Girl (1854),  Cherry Ripe (1879); Moore, Dreamers (1879-82), A Summer Night (1887-90); Poynter, On the Temple Steps (1889), The Cave of the Storm,  Nymphs (1903); D. G. Rossetti, Beata Beatrix (1864-70), The Blessed Damozel (1875-78) [Fogg Art Museum Harvard], Ecce Ancilla Domini (1850); Sandys, Mary Magdalene (1858-60); Spencer-Stanhope, Eve Tempted (1877); Waterhouse, The Lady of Shalott (1888), Hylas and the Nymphs (1896), Lamia (1905); and feel free to examine any others.

Week 6 [Packet #3, c. 55 pp.; plus Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan, c. 85 pp.]

Arthur Wing Pinero — The Second Mrs. Tanqueray (1892); pp. 84–139.

Oscar Wilde — Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892), 1–82.

Week 7  [Packet #3; c. 100 pp.]

Mathilde Blind — “A Fantasy,” “Scarabaeus Sisyphus,” “Mourning Women,” “Noonday Rest,” “The Russian Student’s Tale,” “A Carnival Episode,” “Sonnet,” “A Parting.”

Graham R. Tomson [Rosamund Marriott Watson] — “Old Pauline,” “Ballad of the Bird-Bride,” “A Ballad of the Were-Wolf,” “Vespertilia,” “ Hic Jacet ,” “Children of the Mist,” “The White Lady,” “The Cage,” “Epitaph," "Nirvana.”

May Kendall [Emma Goldworth] — “Lay of the Trilobite,” “Ballad of the Ichthyosaurus,” “The Philanthropist and the Jelly-fish,” “Woman’s Future,” “Ballad of the Cadger,” “Underground,” “In the Toy Shop.”

E. [Edith] Nesbit — “Song,” “The Husband of Today,” “ Vies Manquées ,” “Day and Night,” “The Dead to the Living,” “Great Industrial Centre,” “Love’s Guerdons.”

Mary E. Coleridge — “To Memory,” “The Other Side of the Mirror,” “Master and Guest,” “Doubt,” “The Witch,” “Awake,” “Marriage,” “Wasted,” “The fire, the lamp, and I, were alone together,” “September,” “The White Women,” “The Witches’ Wood,” “An Insincere Wish Addressed to a Beggar,” “A Day-dream,” “Unwelcome,” “Solo,” “I envy not the dead that rest,” “Mortal Combat,” “Friends—With a Difference,” “The Contents of an Ink-bottle" “‘True to myself am I, and false to all,’” “ He Knoweth Not That the Dead Are Thine.”

Week 8  [Packet #3; c. 25 pages; Packet #4; c. 183 pages]

Michael Field [Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper ] — Poetry: “Long Ago: XIV,” “A Dance of Death,” “A Dying Viper,” “The Tragic Mary Queen of Scots,” “The Woods Are Still,” “Unbosoming,” “As two fair vessels side by side,” “Embalmment,” “The Mummy Invokes his Soul,” “Trinity,” “Your Rose is Dead,” “Ebbtide at Sundown,” “Maids, not to you my mind doth change,” “L’Indifférent,” “La Gioconda,” “Thanatos, thy praise I sing,” “A Girl,” “It was deep April, and the morn” [a.k.a. “Prologue”], “Venus and Mars” (see website image of Botticelli’s Venus and Mars ), “A Pen-Drawing of Leda.”

Week 9 [Packet #4, c. 95 pp.; Best of Beardsley, c. 55 pp.; plus website images]

Eliza Lynn Linton — “The Girl of the Period,” Saturday Review, 14 March 1868, [pp. 356–60].

George John Romanes — “Mental Differences Between Men and Women,” Nineteenth Century 21 (May 1887): 654–72.

Grant Allen — “Some Plain Words on the Woman Question,” Fortnightly Review, ns. 46 (1889): 448–58.

Eliza Lynn Linton — “The Wild Women As Social Insurgents,” Nineteenth Century 30 (October 1891): 596–605.

Mona Alison Caird — “A Defence of the So-Called Wild Women,” Nineteenth Century 31 (May 1892): 811–29.

Anonymous (“A Woman”) — “Women—Wives as Mothers,” The Yellow Book 2 (1894): [11]–18.

Sarah Grand — “The New Aspect of the Woman Question,” North American Review 158 (1894): [660–66].

Ouida — “The New Woman,” North American Review 158 (1894): 610–19 [a response to Grand’s “The New Aspects of the Woman Question”].

Sarah Grand — “The New Woman and the Old,” Lady’s Realm (1898): [668–75].

Beardsley — illustrations from Yellow Book and Savoy periods: Best Works of  Aubrey Beardsley, pp. 23, 40–61, 86, 89, 91–93, 95–107, 136–40, 149–50, 152–53, 156–60, plus the additional Yellow Book and Savoy images on my website.
——STATEMENT OF THESIS DUE——
 

Week 10  [Packet #5, c. 140 pages; plus c. 20 website images]

Victoria Cross [Vivian Cory] — “Theodora, A Fragment,” The Yellow Book 4 (January 1895): 156–88.

George Egerton [Mary Chavelita Dunne Bright ] — Martha Vicinus, “Introduction,” pp. v–xix; “The Little Gray Glove,” from Keynotes (1893), [91–114].

Ella D’Arcy — “The Pleasure-Pilgrim,” Yellow Book 5 (April 1895) and Monochromes (1895), 165–218.

High Victorian Art (on my website: http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/snod/19thImages.html): Ingres, La Grande Odalisque (1814), Odalisque with a Slave (1840); Courbet, La Source du Monde [The Origin of the World] (1862); Collier, Lilith (1887); Godward, The Betrothed (1892), Mischief and Repose (1895), The Delphic Oracle (1899), Expectation (1900), The Mirror, or Contemplation (1899); Draper, The Gates of Dawn (1900), The Kelpie (1913); Khnopff,  Head of a young English Girl (1895); Leighton, Idyll (1880-81); Manet, Woman with a Parrot, or Young Lady in 1866 (1866); Millais, Mariana (1851); D. G. Rossetti, Mariana (1870); Wardle, A Bacchante (1909); Waterhouse, Pandora (1896), Ariadne (1898); and feel free to examine any others.
——OUTLINE DUE——
 

Week 11  [Packet #5; c. 120 pages, plus c. 25 website images]

Henry Harland — “Flower o’ the Clove,” The Yellow Book 13 (April 1897): 65–109.

George Egerton [Mary Chavelita Dunne Bright ] — “Wedlock” [142–62], from Discords (1895), [145–62].

Ella D’Arcy — “Irremediable,” Yellow Book 1 (April 1894) and Monochromes (1895), 87–120.

Hubert Crackanthorpe — “Embers,” from Wreckage: Seven Studies (1893), 215–32.

High Victorian Art (on my website: http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/snod/19thImages.html ): Delacroix, Medea (1838); Burne-Jones, Phyllis and Demophöon (1870); Cabanal, Cleopatra Testing Poisons on Condemned Prisoners (1897); Dicksee, La Belle Dame Sans Merci (1902); Draper, Ulysses and the Sirens (1909); Khnopff, The Caresses (1896), Sappho (1912); Leighton, The Fisherman and the Siren (1856-58), The Garden of the Hesperides
(c. 1892); Lévy-Dhurmer, Salome Embracing the Severed Head of John the Baptist (1896), Medusa (1897); Manet, Olympia (1863); Moreau, Oedipus and the Sphinx (1864), Jason (1865), The Poet and the Siren (1894); Morris, Queen Guinevere (1857); Rops, La Tentation de St-Antoine [The Temptation of Saint Anthony] (1878), Pornokrates , or La Dame au cochon (1879), Frontispiece for Les Diaboliques by Barbey d ’Aurevilly (1886),  L’Incantation [Incantation]; Sandys, Morgan le Fay (1864); Stuck, Inferno (1908); and feel free to examine any others.

Week 12  [Packet #6; c. 90 pages; Best of Beardsley, c. 30 pp; plus website images]

John Oliver Hobbes [Pearl Craigie ] — The Sinner’s Comedy (1892), [124]–199.

Beardsley — illustrations for The Rape of the Lock, Pierrot of the Minute, Volpone, and other later projects: Best Works of Aubrey Beardsley, pp. 95–106, 114–22, 131–35, 148, plus the additional Yellow Book and Savoy images on my website.
——DRAFT OF TERM PAPER DUE——  
 

Week 13 [Packet #6; c. 120 pages; Wilde, Poems, c. 20 pp.; plus c. 10 website images]

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, “Introduction,” “Gender Asymmetry and Erotic Triangles,” from Between Men (New York: Columbia UP, 1985), 1–27.

Walter Pater — from Plato & Platonism (1893), 103-108; Greek Studies (1895), 250-55.

John Gray — “On a Picture,” “Poem,” “A Crucifix,” “Parsifal Imitated,” “Femmes Damnées,” “The Barber,”  “Mishka,” “Charleville.”

Oscar Wilde — “Requiescat,” “ Vita Nuova,” “ Impression du Matin,” “The Grave of Keats,” “ Hélas! ” “Taedium Vitae,” “[Bittersweet Love],” “The Harlot’s House,” “The Ballad of Reading Gaol.”

Lionel Johnson — “The Cultured Faun,” “The Church of a Dream,” “Mystic and Cavalier,” “To a Passionist,” “In Honour of Dorian and His Creator,” “The Destroyer of a Soul,” “The Dark Angel,” “Nihilism,” “A Decadent’s Lyric.”

Richard Le Gallienne — “To the Reader,” “The Décadent to His Soul.”

Count Eric Stenbock — “A Modern St. Venantius,” “The Story of a Scapular,” pp. 95–110.

Alfred Douglas — “Two Loves,” Chameleon 1 (November 1894): 28.

X. [Anonymous] — “The Priest and the Acolyte,” Chameleon 1 (November 1894): 29–47.

High Victorian Art (on my website: http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/snod/Texts&Images.htm ): Douris [Greek Vase Painter], Heterosexual Intercourse [Boston 1970.233], Homosexual Courtship [Boston 10.193, Side A], Homosexual Courtship [Boston 10.193, Side B]; Bouguereau, Cupidon (1875); Leighton,  Athlete Struggling with a Python (1874-77); Renoir, Young Boy with a Cat (1868-69); Schwabe, Les noces du poete avec la muse ou l ’ ideal (1902); Simeon Solomon, Sappho and Erinna at Mytelene (1864), Bacchus (1868); The Sleepers, and the One that Watcheth (1870).
 

Week 14 [Packet #6, c. 55 pp.; Best of Beardsley, c. 25 pp.; plus 1 website image ]

Aubrey Beardsley — “The Three Musicians,” “Ballad of the Barber,” The Story of Venus and Tannhäuser (1895–97), Best Works of Aubrey Beardsley, pp. 19, 73–85, 87–88, 90, 94, 107, 123, 144–47, 151, 154–55.

Beardsley — illustrations for Lysistrata (1897), Best Works of Beardsley, pp. 141–43, 97, plus the additional Lysistrata images in packet and on my website.

High Victorian Art (on my website: http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/snod/19thImages.html ): Collier, In the Venusburg (Tannhäuser) (1901);

——TERM PAPER DUE NOON, MONDAY OF FINALS WEEK——