ENL 6256
WILDE, BEARDSLEY, & THE AESTHETICIZATION OF
LATE-VICTORIAN SEXUAL POLITICS

Dr. C. Snodgrass; 4336 Turlington, 392-6650, ext. 262; 376-8362; snod@english.ufl.edu
 


 

SYLLABUS:  READING SCHEDULE


COURSE TEXTS (Texts available at Goering’s Book Center, photocopy packets at Orange and Blue Textbooks)

John Berger, Ways of Seeing (Penguin)
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oxford UP)
Oscar Wilde, The Plays of Oscar Wilde (Vintage)
Aubrey Beardsley, The Best Works of Aubrey Beardsley (Dover)
Five (5) photocopy supplements — from OBT
 

SCHEDULE (subject to modest negotiation)

Week  1  [166 pages]
Introduction
John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London: Penguin, 1972)
 

Week  2  [Packet #1 ; c. 165 pages, Best of Beardsley, c. 35 pp.; plus c. 15 additional website images]

Chamberlin and Gilman, “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.

Oscar Wilde — “The Decay of Lying,” Nineteenth Century (January 1889), and in Intentions (1891), [2]–57.        

Aubrey Beardsley — La Morte Darthur and other mostly early pictures: Best Works of Aubrey Beardsley, pp. 3–17, 20–22, 62–72, 124–29, plus the additional Le Morte Darthur images on my website; view Rossetti’s La Pia de’ Tolomei (1868-80) in conjunction with Beardsley’s Kiss of Judas.

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

Chris Snodgrass, “Beardsley’s Oscillating Spaces: Play, Paradox, and the Grotesque,” Reconsidering Aubrey Beardsley, ed. Robert Langenfeld (1989), [19]–52.   


Week 3  [Packets #1 & 2, c. 271 pages]

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.

Walter Pater —“Preface” and “Conclusion,” from The Renaissance (1873), vii–xv, 233–39; excerpts from Plato and Platonism (1893), 102–109, and Greek Studies (1895), 251–55.

Arthur Symons — “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.

Oscar Wilde — “The Critic As Artist,” Nineteenth Century (July and September 1890), and in Intentions (1891), [98]–224. 

Aubrey Beardsley — “The Art of Hoarding,” New Review (July 1894), 91, 93–94.

Chris Snodgrass, “The Beardsleyan Dandy: Icon of Grotesque Beauty,” from Aubrey Beardsley, Dandy of the Grotesque (Oxford UP, 1995), 204–242, 309–310.

——PROJECT SELECTION DUE——

Week 4  [Packet #3, c. 100 pp.; Best of Beardsley, c. 30 pp; plus c. 15 additional website images]

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

Walter Pater — “Winckelmann,” from The Renaissance (1873), 183–215.

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

Oscar Wilde — The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890–91), vii–xxiv, [1]–236.

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]; Simeon Solomon, Sappho and Erinna at Mytelene (1864), Bacchus (1867), Bacchus (1868); The Sleepers, and the One that Watcheth, or Reverie (1870); Renoir, Young Boy with a Cat (1868-69); Bouguereau, Cupidon (1875); Leighton, Athlete Struggling with a Python (1874-77).

Aubrey Beardsley —“The Three Musicians,” 50–52; “Ballad of the Barber” & The Story of Venus and Tannhäuser (1895–97), 6–46; Best Works of Aubrey Beardsley, pp. 19, 73–74, 76–77, 79, 82–85, 87–88, 91, 94, 97,  107, 123, 131–35, 144–47, 151, 154–55.

High Victorian Art (on my website: http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/snod/Texts&Images.htm):  Collier, In the Venusburg (Tannhäuser) (1901).


Week 5  [Packet #3, c. 100 pages; 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.

19th-Century Art (on my website: http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/snod/19thImages.html): Rowlandson, The Concert (after 1812), Susanna and the Elders (after 1812); Ingres, The Source (1820–56); Ford Madox Brown, “Take Your Son, Sir!” (1851-92) [unfinished]; Burton, The Wounded Cavalier (1855); Rossetti, Arthur’s Tomb (1854, British Museum), Arthur’s Tomb (1855, Tate Gallery), La Ghirlandata (1873), Astarte Syriaca (1877); Courbet, La Source du Monde [The Origin of the World] (1862), L'Origine du monde [The Origin of the World] (1866); Burne-Jones, Pan and Psyche (1872-74), The Beguiling of Merlin (1874), Perseus Slaying the Sea Serpent, or Doom Fulfilled (1876-88), The Depths of the Sea (1887); Bouguereau, Naissance de Vénus [Birth of Venus] (1879), Le Ravissement de Psyche (1895); Alma-Tadema, In the Tepidarium (1881), In the Tepidarium, detail (1881); Rops, La Femme au Lorgnon, or La Buveuse d’Absinthe; Stuck, The Sphinx (1889), Sin (1893) [4th image down, “Il peccato”], Kiss of the Sphinx (1895); Schwabe, Medusa (1895), Spleen and Ideal (c. 1907-8), The Faun (1923); and feel free to examine any others.

Chris Snodgrass, “The Rhetoric of the Grotesque: Monstrous Emblems,” from Aubrey Beardsley, Dandy of the Grotesque (Oxford UP, 1995), 161–203, 308–309.

—— BIBLIOGRAPHY DUE ——

Week 6  [The Plays of Oscar Wilde, c. 41 pages]

Oscar Wilde, Salome (1891–92), [83]–124.


Week 7  [Packet #4: c. 105 pp.; plus c. 55 website images]

Historical images of Fatal Women (on my website: http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/snod/OtherImages.html ): Mantegna, Judith and Holofernes (1495), Judith and Holofernes (1495-1500) [grisaille]; Giorgione, Judith (1504) [click on small image]; 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); Rubens, Judith with the Head of Holofernes (c. 1616), Judith with the Head of Holofernes (1620-22); Klimt, Judith I (1901), Judith I [another version] (1901), Judith II (1909), Judith II [another version] (1909);
Mostly 19th-Century Art (on my website: http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/snod/19thImages.html ): Delacroix, Medea (1838); Morris, Queen Guinevere (1857); Titian, Venus of Urbino (1538); Manet, Olympia (1863); Sandys, Morgan le Fay (1864); Rossetti, Lilith (1868); Burne-Jones, Phyllis and Demophöon (1870), The Tree of Forgiveness (1870); Leighton, The Fisherman and the Siren (1856-58), The Garden of the Hesperides (c. 1892); Moreau, Oedipus and the Sphinx (1864), Jason (1863-65), Salome Dancing Before Herod (1874-76), The Apparition (1874-76), The Poet and the Siren (1894); 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]; Cabanal, Cleopatra Testing Poisons on Condemned Prisoners (1897); Khnopff, The Caress (1896); Lévy-Dhurmer, Salome Embracing the Severed Head of John the Baptist (1896), Medusa (1897); Ingres, Angelica Saved by Ruggiero [6th image down, click on to enlarge] (1819); Dicksee, La Belle Dame Sans Merci (1902); Draper, Ulysses and the Sirens (1909); Stuck, Salomé (1906), Judith and Holofernes (1926), Judith and Holofernes, another version (1926); and feel free to examine any others.

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

Arthur Symons — “The World as Ballet,” from Studies in the Seven Arts  (1906), 244–46.

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.


Week 8  [Packet #4: c. 90 pages; plus c. 50 website images]

Deborah Gorham, “Women and Girls in the Middle-Class Family: Images and Reality,” “The Victorian Middle-Class Girl: An Overview,” from The Victorian Girl and the Feminine Ideal (London: Croom Helm, 1982), 3–35.

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

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

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

Articles on John Everett Millais:
Laurel Bradley, “From Eden to Empire: John Everett Millais’s Cherry Ripe,” Victorian Studies 34.2 (Winter 1991): [179]–203.
Pamela Tamarkin Reis, “Victorian Centerfold: Another Look at Millais’s Cherry Ripe,” Victorian Studies 35.2 (Winter 1992): [201]–205.
Laurel Bradley, “Reply to Pamela Tamarkin Reis,” Victorian Studies 35.2 (Winter 1992): 206.

Mostly 19th-Century Art (on my website: http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/snod/19thImages.html ): Hunt, The Hireling Shepherd (1851), The Awakening Conscience (1853), The Lady of Shalott (1889-92) [Manchester]; 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); Millais, The Woodman’s Daughter (1951), The Blind Girl (1854), Cherry Ripe (1879); Egg, Travelling Companions (1862); Bouguereau, Le Printemps [The Return of Spring] (1866), The Abduction of Psyche (1895); Sandys, Mary Magdalene (1858-60), Medusa (1875); Spencer-Stanhope, Eve Tempted (c. 1877, Manchester City Art Gallery), Eve Tempted (c. 1877, Ross Collection, USA); Long, The Babylonian Marriage Market (1875), The Chosen Five (1885);  D. G. Rossetti, Ecce Ancilla Domini (1850), Beata Beatrix (1864-70, Tate Gallery), Beata Beatrix (1877-82, Birmingham City Museum), The Blessed Damozel (1875-78, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard), The Blessed Damozel (1875-78, Lady Lever Art Gallery); 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); Manet, Nana (1877); Moore, Dreamers (1879-82), A Summer Night (1887-90); Dicksee, Harmony (1877), Chivalry (1885), The End of the Quest (1921); Leighton, Idyll (1880-81), The Bath of Psyche (c. 1890), Perseus and Andromeda (1891-94), Flaming June (1895); Draper, A Water Baby (1900); Poynter, The Cave of the Storm Nymphs (1903); Waterhouse, The Lady of Shalott (1888), Hylas and the Nymphs (1896), Lamia (1905), Lamia (1909); and feel free to examine any others.


Week 9 [Packets #4 & #5: c. 137 pp.; plus c. 30 website images from Punch]

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

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].

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

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

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

Punch cartoons (see “Text & Images” website on my homepage: http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/snod/19thImages.html):  About the New Woman, Gender Issues: “Imitation is Sincerest Flattery” (Vol. 98, p. 162), Sterner Stuff, Vol. 101 (1891), A Bird of Prey, Vol. 102 (1892), The Darwinian Theory, Vol. 102, P. 291 (1892), New Woman with Hat, Vol. 103, P. 49 (1892), Descent Into the Maelstrom, Vol. 104, P. 29 (1893), A Terrible Turk, Vol. 104 (1893), Modern Labor, Vol. 104 (1893), Proceeding By Leaps & Bounds, Vol. 104, P. 273 (1893), Determination, Vol. 105 (1894), 2nd Mrs. Tanqueray, Vol. 105, P. 54 (1894), 2nd Mrs. Tanqueray Is Played Out, Vol. 106 (1894), We’ve Not Come To That Yet, Vol. 106 (1894), What It Will Soon Come To, Vol. 106 (1894), Donna Quixote, Vol. 106 (1894), Billing and Cooing, Vol. 106 (1894), Our Decadents (Female), Vol. 106 (1894), Passionate Female Literary Types, Vol. 106 (1894), A Little “New Woman,” Vol. 107 (1894), A “New Woman,” Vol. 107, P. 111 (1894), New Woman Riding Bike, Vol. 108 (1895), Sylvia Scarlet, Vol. 108 (1895), The New Woman, Vol. 108, P. 282 (1895), The Woman Who Wouldn’t, Vol. 108 (1895), The Woman Who Wanted To, Vol. 109 (1895), Presiding Deity, 1895, Vol. 109 (1895), La Belle Dame Sans Merci, Vol. 109, P. 268 (1895), The New Expression, Vol. 110 (1896), Prospects of the Leap Year Club, Vol. 110 (1896), “I Do Not Bike,” Vol. 112, P. 17 (1897).

——STATEMENT OF THESIS DUE—— 


Week 10  [Best of Beardsley, c. 23 pp; plus c. 20 website images]

Beardsley — illustrations from Yellow Book period: Best Works of  Aubrey Beardsley, pp. 40–61, 152–53, plus any additional Yellow Book images on my website.

19th-Century Art (on my website: http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/snod/19thImages.html):  Ingres, La Grande Odalisque (1814), Odalisque with a Slave (1840); Millais, Mariana (1851); G. Rossetti, Mariana (1870); Manet, Woman with a Parrot, or Young Lady in 1866 (1866); Collier, Lilith (1887); Waterhouse, Pandora (1896), Ariadne (1898); Godward, The Betrothed (1892), Mischief and Repose (1895), The Delphic Oracle (1899), The Mirror, or Contemplation (1899); D.  Draper, The Gates of Dawn (1900), The Kelpie (1913); and feel free to examine any others.

Punch cartoons (see “Text & Images” website on my homepage: http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/snod/19thImages.html):  Referencing Beardsley: An Appropriate Illustration, by Danby Weirdsley, Vol. 106 (1894), SheNotes, Vol. 106 (1894), SheNotes Reclining, Vol. 106 (1894), “Ars Postera,” Vol. 106 (1894), Quid Est Pictura — Veritas Falsa, Vol. 107, P. 47 (1894), The Minx, Vol. 107 (1894), By Mortarthurio Whiskersley, Vol. 107 (1894), “Ars Presumptera,” Vol. 107, P. 205 (1894),  Britannia à la Beardsley, Vol. 108 (1895), Beardsley Pulling Carriage, Vol. 108 (1895), Published at the Bodily Head, Vol. 108 (1895), Le Yellow Book, Vol.108 (1895).  Referencing High Society, Fashion, London Season, the Arts:  Prospects for the Coming Season, Vol. 98, P. 147 (1890), Successful Opera Season, Vol. 103 (1892), Woman With Peacock Fan, Vol. 104, P. 21 (1893), Japanese Fan, Vol. 104 (1893), Tara-Ra, Vol. 104 (1893), Girl With Fan, Vol. 108 (1895), Sleeves, Vol. 109 (1895), The Society Novel, Vol. 110, P. 69 (1896), Fashionable Dress, Vol. 111, P. 108 (1896).

——OUTLINE DUE——


Week 11  [The Plays of Oscar Wilde, c. 210 pages]

John Lahr, “Introduction,” The Plays of Oscar Wilde, vii–xl.

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

Oscar Wilde — A Woman of No Importance (1893), [125]–218.


Week 12  [The Plays of Oscar Wilde, c. 220 pages]

Oscar Wilde — An Ideal Husband (1895), [219]–343.

Oscar Wilde — The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), [345]–440.

——DRAFT OF TERM PAPER DUE—— 


Week 13  [Packet #5: c. 58 pp; Best of Beardsley, c. 65 pages; plus website images]

Beardsley — illustrations from Savoy period:  Best of Beardsley, pp. 40–61, 75, 78, 80–81, 86, 89–90, 92–93, 130, 136–40, 151, 154–60, plus the additional Savoy images on my website.

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.

Chris Snodgrass, “The Rhetoric of Parody: Signing and Resigning the Canon,” Aubrey Beardsley, Dandy of the Grotesque (Oxford UP, 1995), 243–95, 310–14.


Week 14 [Packet #5: c. 10 pp.; Best of Beardsley, c. 5 pp.; plus website images]

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


Week 15

Review, etc.

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