Anxiety Angst Anguish In Fin De Si Cle Art And Literature

This volume examines various manifestations of anguish in art, literature, and philosophy. It demonstrates that the experience of anguish manifested itself in a spectacular way in the arts in the late 19th – early 20th centuries. It makes obvious the extraordinary tension between anguish and art. The works discussed here reflect the magnitude of anguish generated by historical events, scientific advancements (especially in psychology), and metaphysical inquiries of the time. Through the invention of new artistic languages, those works also illustrate the fecundity of anguish for artists.

This book explores how states and traits of anxiety are reflected in the style and structure of certain works by three key figures of modern Scandinavian literature: August Strindberg, Inger Christensen, Karl Ove Knausgård. On the basis of particular literary analyses, it develops a literary phenomenology of anxiety as well as a hermeneutical theory of anxiety that considers the ways in which anxiety has been represented in various genres of modern Scandinavian literature from the last three centuries. Whereas the former uncovers the ways in which anxiety is reflected in literary form and style, the latter interprets the relationship between author, text, and reader as well as the effects of genre. As Strindberg’s works capture the tensions between existential indeterminism and naturalistic determinism and make way for negative aesthetic pleasure, poetry such as Christensen’s challenges scientistic and psychiatric conceptions of anxiety and instigates a change in how humans conduct themselves in relation to the experience of anxiety. Finally, Knausgård’s autofictive work gives voice to the socially anxious self of late modernity and incites moments of self-intensification and reorganizes the fragile self of contemporary society. In this way, it becomes clear that literature is an outstanding archive of representations and transformations in the cultural history of anxiety. Literature is an aesthetic medium of expression and reflection that represents anxiety in a number of ways that may enrich our understanding of anxiety today. This work thus contributes to cultural and literary scholarship that contests the subjugation of anxiety to a scientific world view and aims to expose the imaginative and creative dimensions of anxiety that are often ignored in contemporary public discourse and policy.

This classic memoir of the First World War is now a major motion picture starring Alicia Vikander and Kit Harington. Includes an afterword by Kate Mosse OBE. In 1914 Vera Brittain was 20, and as war was declared she was preparing to study at Oxford. Four years later her life - and the life of her whole generation - had changed in a way that would have been unimaginable in the tranquil pre-war era. TESTAMENT OF YOUTH, one of the most famous autobiographies of the First World War, is Brittain's account of how she survived those agonising years; how she lost the man she loved; how she nursed the wounded and how she emerged into an altered world. A passionate record of a lost generation, it made Vera Brittain one of the best-loved writers of her time, and has lost none of its power to shock, move and enthral readers since its first publication in 1933.

Decadence and Literature explains how the concept of decadence developed since Roman times into a major cultural trope with broad explanatory power. No longer just a term of opprobrium for mannered art or immoral behaviour, decadence today describes complex cultural and social responses to modernity in all its forms. From the Roman emperor's indulgence in luxurious excess as both personal vice and political control, to the Enlightenment libertine's rational pursuit of hedonism, to the nineteenth-century dandy's simultaneous delight and distaste with modern urban life, decadence has emerged as a way of taking cultural stock of major social changes. These changes include the role of women in forms of artistic expression and social participation formerly reserved for men, as well as the increasing acceptance of LGBTQ+ relationships, a development with a direct relationship to decadence. Today, decadence seems more important than ever to an informed understanding of contemporary anxieties and uncertainties.

This comprehensive and beautifully illustrated collection of essays conveys a vivid picture of a fascinating and hugely significant period in history, the Fin de Siècle. 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 Siècle 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-Siècle 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-Siècle period.

With imaginative lushness and narrative elan, Mehta provides a novel that combines Indian storytelling with thoroughly modern perceptions into the nature of love--love both carnal and sublime, treacherous and redeeming. "Conveys a world that is spiritual, foreign, and entirely accessible."--Vanity Fair. Reading tour.

Like music, art is a universal language. Although looking at works of art is a pleasurable enough experience, to appreciate them fully requires certain skills and knowledge." --Carol Strickland, from the introduction to The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern * This heavily illustrated crash course in art history is revised and updated. This second edition of Carol Strickland's The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern offers an illustrated tutorial of prehistoric to post-modern art from cave paintings to video art installations to digital and Internet media. * Featuring succinct page-length essays, instructive sidebars, and more than 300 photographs, The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern takes art history out of the realm of dreary textbooks, demystifies jargon and theory, and makes art accessible-even at a cursory reading. * From Stonehenge to the Guggenheim and from Holbein to Warhol, more than 25,000 years of art is distilled into five sections covering a little more than 200 pages.

This insightful volumes the use of imitation and the modern cult of originality through a consideration of the disparate fates of two Venetian painters - the canonised master Titian and his artistic heir, the little-known Padovanino.