Marie Corelli was, in her day, a wildly popular best-selling author and public figure, one who captured the public’s imagination with her dramatic and fantastical novels. Her great popularity and the apparently moralistic elements of her work have excluded her from the ranks of the fin-de-siecle British Decadents, a group (such as it exists) traditionally defined by its rejection of mainstream middle-class values and its desire to appeal to a select readership of aesthetically-minded intellectuals. Indeed, Corelli’s novel Wormwood is generally read as an anti-Decadent creed, or at the very least a novel which disingenuously castigates Decadence while titillating readers with themes and tropes “co-opted” from works of that genre.In fact, Wormwood is so often read in these terms because it eludes easy interpretation, a quality that marks it as a distinctly Decadent text. Corelli’s condemnation of the absintheur as a failed Decadent is a call not to moral orthodoxy, but to another, less recognizable but equally subversive model of Decadence. Some of the doubts the novel raises about the Decadent project and the troubled place of the Decadent in the nineteenth-century popular imagination are echoed by other Decadent works of the time.Reading Corelli’s novel in this way not only allows for a dramatic rethinking of her work, it also opens up a reconsideration of the ways that Decadence was embraced by the fin-de-siecle literary public, and the ways that public did not merely consume Decadence but refined and disseminated it. This reading also raises the possibility that the Decadent practice of drawing the boundaries of genre in tight and exclusionary ways served to encourage the production of numerous Decadences.
{"title":"Marie Corelli, Wormwood, and the Diversity of Decadence","authors":"J. DeCoux","doi":"10.4000/CVE.1337","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/CVE.1337","url":null,"abstract":"Marie Corelli was, in her day, a wildly popular best-selling author and public figure, one who captured the public’s imagination with her dramatic and fantastical novels. Her great popularity and the apparently moralistic elements of her work have excluded her from the ranks of the fin-de-siecle British Decadents, a group (such as it exists) traditionally defined by its rejection of mainstream middle-class values and its desire to appeal to a select readership of aesthetically-minded intellectuals. Indeed, Corelli’s novel Wormwood is generally read as an anti-Decadent creed, or at the very least a novel which disingenuously castigates Decadence while titillating readers with themes and tropes “co-opted” from works of that genre.In fact, Wormwood is so often read in these terms because it eludes easy interpretation, a quality that marks it as a distinctly Decadent text. Corelli’s condemnation of the absintheur as a failed Decadent is a call not to moral orthodoxy, but to another, less recognizable but equally subversive model of Decadence. Some of the doubts the novel raises about the Decadent project and the troubled place of the Decadent in the nineteenth-century popular imagination are echoed by other Decadent works of the time.Reading Corelli’s novel in this way not only allows for a dramatic rethinking of her work, it also opens up a reconsideration of the ways that Decadence was embraced by the fin-de-siecle literary public, and the ways that public did not merely consume Decadence but refined and disseminated it. This reading also raises the possibility that the Decadent practice of drawing the boundaries of genre in tight and exclusionary ways served to encourage the production of numerous Decadences.","PeriodicalId":41197,"journal":{"name":"CAHIERS VICTORIENS & EDOUARDIENS","volume":"18 1","pages":"89-106"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75234499","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In scrutinising Aestheticism, feminist scholarship has found the usual characteristics: a band of male actors, achievers and heroes, an extensive use of female imagery, and an investment in the idea or fantasy of Woman in the absence (designed or accidental) of actual women. With regard to Aestheticism as a literary trend, scholars working under the influence of feminism, from Elaine Showalter on, have restored female agency to the territory, re-instating the achievements of various women writers in shaping Aestheticism in its own time, while provoking a reassessment of its meanings and messages through this problematising of the authority of its traditional movers and shakers (Schaffer and Psomiades, Women and British Aestheticism, 1999; Schaffer, The Forgotten Female Aesthetes, 2000). The same has not occurred for the visual art of Aestheticism.To address the work of gender within Aestheticism, this paper proposes some specific works by women artists as characteristic of the style. In so doing it introduces several new names (Isobel Gloag, Constance Halford, Thea Proctor) into the cast of executive characters that the author contends are necessary to a full account of Aestheticism as a trend in British culture bridging the 19th and 20th centuries.
在仔细审视唯美主义的过程中，女权主义学者发现了通常的特征:一群男性演员、成就者和英雄，大量使用女性形象，在没有实际女性(有意或偶然)的情况下，对女性的观念或幻想进行投资。关于唯美主义作为一种文学趋势，在女性主义影响下工作的学者们，从伊兰·肖瓦尔特(Elaine Showalter)开始，已经恢复了女性主体的地位，重新确立了各种女性作家在当时塑造唯美主义的成就，同时通过对传统推动者和动摇者的权威提出质疑，引发了对其意义和信息的重新评估(Schaffer and Psomiades, women and British Aestheticism, 1999;《被遗忘的女性美学家》，2000)。唯美主义的视觉艺术却没有出现同样的情况。为了解决唯美主义中的性别作品，本文提出了一些具有唯美主义风格特征的女性艺术家的具体作品。在这样做的过程中，它引入了几个新的名字(伊莎贝尔·格洛格，康斯坦斯·哈尔福德，西娅·普罗克特)到执行角色的演员，作者认为这是必要的，以全面说明唯美主义作为一个趋势在英国文化的桥梁19和20世纪。
{"title":"Alienation, Adoption or Adaptation? Aestheticist Paintings by Women","authors":"P. G. Nunn","doi":"10.4000/CVE.1364","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/CVE.1364","url":null,"abstract":"In scrutinising Aestheticism, feminist scholarship has found the usual characteristics: a band of male actors, achievers and heroes, an extensive use of female imagery, and an investment in the idea or fantasy of Woman in the absence (designed or accidental) of actual women. With regard to Aestheticism as a literary trend, scholars working under the influence of feminism, from Elaine Showalter on, have restored female agency to the territory, re-instating the achievements of various women writers in shaping Aestheticism in its own time, while provoking a reassessment of its meanings and messages through this problematising of the authority of its traditional movers and shakers (Schaffer and Psomiades, Women and British Aestheticism, 1999; Schaffer, The Forgotten Female Aesthetes, 2000). The same has not occurred for the visual art of Aestheticism.To address the work of gender within Aestheticism, this paper proposes some specific works by women artists as characteristic of the style. In so doing it introduces several new names (Isobel Gloag, Constance Halford, Thea Proctor) into the cast of executive characters that the author contends are necessary to a full account of Aestheticism as a trend in British culture bridging the 19th and 20th centuries.","PeriodicalId":41197,"journal":{"name":"CAHIERS VICTORIENS & EDOUARDIENS","volume":"17 1","pages":"141-154"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74022773","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
George Eliot’s engagement with gender ideology has often been discussed in relation to her novels even though she expresses her views on the so-called “woman question”much earlier, in her journalistic work. She was a contributor to the radical Westminster Review and, from 1852–54, also its editor. The various readings of one of her essays “Woman in France: Madame de Sable”, published anonymously in 1854, reflect the very different ways in which Eliot’s position regarding the woman question has been interpreted. For Shirley Foster, who compares her to the notorious antifeminist Sarah Ellis, the essay documents her antifeminism. Other critics, who mention this rarely-analysed essay, use it to illustrate Eliot’s feminist credo or, like Frederick R. Karl, find the text a contradictory one. The central claim of this essay is that in “Woman in France” Eliot makes a clearly feminist statement, expressed in a very subtle and innovative way. My argument will demonstrate that the variety of readings is due to the fact that the references to French women and French writers have often been overlooked.
乔治·艾略特对性别意识形态的关注经常与她的小说联系起来讨论，尽管她在更早的时候就在她的新闻作品中表达了她对所谓“女性问题”的看法。她是激进的《威斯敏斯特评论》的撰稿人，从1852年到1854年，她也是该杂志的编辑。艾略特在1854年匿名发表的一篇文章《法国的女人:萨布尔夫人》(Woman in France: Madame de Sable)的不同解读，反映了艾略特在女性问题上的不同立场。雪莉·福斯特(Shirley Foster)将她与臭名昭著的反女权主义者莎拉·埃利斯(Sarah Ellis)相比，这篇文章记录了她的反女权主义。其他评论家提到这篇很少被分析的文章，用它来说明艾略特的女权主义信条，或者像弗雷德里克·r·卡尔(Frederick R. Karl)一样，发现这篇文章是矛盾的。本文的中心主张是，在《法国的女人》中，艾略特以一种非常微妙和创新的方式表达了一个明确的女权主义声明。我的论点将证明，阅读的多样性是由于对法国妇女和法国作家的参考经常被忽视。
{"title":"The Evolution of Woman. George Eliot’s“Woman in France: Madame de Sablé”","authors":"Barbara Pauk","doi":"10.4000/CVE.2166","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/CVE.2166","url":null,"abstract":"George Eliot’s engagement with gender ideology has often been discussed in relation to her novels even though she expresses her views on the so-called “woman question”much earlier, in her journalistic work. She was a contributor to the radical Westminster Review and, from 1852–54, also its editor. The various readings of one of her essays “Woman in France: Madame de Sable”, published anonymously in 1854, reflect the very different ways in which Eliot’s position regarding the woman question has been interpreted. For Shirley Foster, who compares her to the notorious antifeminist Sarah Ellis, the essay documents her antifeminism. Other critics, who mention this rarely-analysed essay, use it to illustrate Eliot’s feminist credo or, like Frederick R. Karl, find the text a contradictory one. The central claim of this essay is that in “Woman in France” Eliot makes a clearly feminist statement, expressed in a very subtle and innovative way. My argument will demonstrate that the variety of readings is due to the fact that the references to French women and French writers have often been overlooked.","PeriodicalId":41197,"journal":{"name":"CAHIERS VICTORIENS & EDOUARDIENS","volume":"38 1","pages":"37-50"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-03-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78803977","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The unprecedented boom in the art periodical press of the late nineteenth century contributed to shape and redefine the role of the artist in the eyes of the public. This paper examines the visual and discursive constructions and reconfigurations of the persona of the decorative artist in the influential fin de siecle magazine for the fine and applied arts The Studio. Founded in 1893 by Charles Holme and edited by Gleeson White, this periodical was created to proclaim the achievements of the Arts and Crafts designers. As any periodical, however, The Studio was a commercial venture too. Both a financial and an artistic success, it managed skillfully to combine serious articles by expert critics, popular New Journalism features, and beautiful illustrations. Analyzing the successive magazine covers, the visual matrix of the magazine, the rubric dedicated to artists’ interviews and the “Lay Figure” editorial pages, this study examines the poetics of the magazine to show how this periodical successfully promoted the craftsman (traditionally viewed as a practitioner of low arts) as the ideal liberal artist (high art). In The Studio, the craftsman became the new artistic paradigm, thus leading to major changes in the readers’ perception of the artist, the nature of art and their relation to industry and commerce.
{"title":"The Studio and the Craftsman as Artist: A study in periodical poetics (1893-1900)","authors":"Catherine Delyfer","doi":"10.4000/CVE.3101","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/CVE.3101","url":null,"abstract":"The unprecedented boom in the art periodical press of the late nineteenth century contributed to shape and redefine the role of the artist in the eyes of the public. This paper examines the visual and discursive constructions and reconfigurations of the persona of the decorative artist in the influential fin de siecle magazine for the fine and applied arts The Studio. Founded in 1893 by Charles Holme and edited by Gleeson White, this periodical was created to proclaim the achievements of the Arts and Crafts designers. As any periodical, however, The Studio was a commercial venture too. Both a financial and an artistic success, it managed skillfully to combine serious articles by expert critics, popular New Journalism features, and beautiful illustrations. Analyzing the successive magazine covers, the visual matrix of the magazine, the rubric dedicated to artists’ interviews and the “Lay Figure” editorial pages, this study examines the poetics of the magazine to show how this periodical successfully promoted the craftsman (traditionally viewed as a practitioner of low arts) as the ideal liberal artist (high art). In The Studio, the craftsman became the new artistic paradigm, thus leading to major changes in the readers’ perception of the artist, the nature of art and their relation to industry and commerce.","PeriodicalId":41197,"journal":{"name":"CAHIERS VICTORIENS & EDOUARDIENS","volume":"30 1","pages":"437-452"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85933885","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The aim of this paper is to analyse some of the rhetorical strategies used by Darwin to persuade his reader of the validity of evolution theory in The Origin of Species. The links between science, religion, moral and politics are so intricate in Victorian England that Darwin needs to convince public opinion as well as the scientific community. There are many sides to the reader whose reaction Darwin is anticipating when writing : scientist, humanist or not learned, religious or agnostic ? Darwin uses a conversational style to create a special closeness with his reader, as well as popular language and images to convince as wide an audience as possible while flattering his reader’s humanist appetencies thanks to various literary devices. As the literary dimension of the book blurs the limit between the popular and the learned, Darwin tries to reconcile the core dichotomy between the religious and the agnostic reader by an ambiguous reference to the agency of natural selection : is it merely a random natural process, or literally a transcending agent, another version of God’s action in the theory of evolution ?
{"title":"À quel(s) public(s) s'adresse Darwin? L'Origine des Espèces, entre ouvrage scientifique, œuvre littéraire, et texte de vulgarisation","authors":"Camille Debras","doi":"10.4000/CVE.3099","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/CVE.3099","url":null,"abstract":"The aim of this paper is to analyse some of the rhetorical strategies used by Darwin to persuade his reader of the validity of evolution theory in The Origin of Species. The links between science, religion, moral and politics are so intricate in Victorian England that Darwin needs to convince public opinion as well as the scientific community. There are many sides to the reader whose reaction Darwin is anticipating when writing : scientist, humanist or not learned, religious or agnostic ? Darwin uses a conversational style to create a special closeness with his reader, as well as popular language and images to convince as wide an audience as possible while flattering his reader’s humanist appetencies thanks to various literary devices. As the literary dimension of the book blurs the limit between the popular and the learned, Darwin tries to reconcile the core dichotomy between the religious and the agnostic reader by an ambiguous reference to the agency of natural selection : is it merely a random natural process, or literally a transcending agent, another version of God’s action in the theory of evolution ?","PeriodicalId":41197,"journal":{"name":"CAHIERS VICTORIENS & EDOUARDIENS","volume":"49 2 1","pages":"419-436"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81176202","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
According to Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, the ritornello’s first formulation is the little song a child sings to himself to find comfort when alone in the dark. It is a sound that repeats itself, forms a centre, becomes a motif, ends up coming in a rhythmic contact with what surrounds the territory it has created, until it vibrates in harmony with the Cosmos. This little song is to be found in Emily Bronte’s poetry, repeating itself, evolving, up until its essence is finally endorsed by the voice of the wind which woos the poet into a poetic transe. The incantatory resurgence of the ritornello punctuates the poetic mind’s trip from fancy to imagination, along which the idea of return applies less to the memory than to the repressed.
{"title":"De la petite chanson aux rafales du vent: le parcours de la ritournelle dans l'œuvre poétique d'Emily Brontë","authors":"C. Borie","doi":"10.4000/CVE.3073","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/CVE.3073","url":null,"abstract":"According to Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, the ritornello’s first formulation is the little song a child sings to himself to find comfort when alone in the dark. It is a sound that repeats itself, forms a centre, becomes a motif, ends up coming in a rhythmic contact with what surrounds the territory it has created, until it vibrates in harmony with the Cosmos. This little song is to be found in Emily Bronte’s poetry, repeating itself, evolving, up until its essence is finally endorsed by the voice of the wind which woos the poet into a poetic transe. The incantatory resurgence of the ritornello punctuates the poetic mind’s trip from fancy to imagination, along which the idea of return applies less to the memory than to the repressed.","PeriodicalId":41197,"journal":{"name":"CAHIERS VICTORIENS & EDOUARDIENS","volume":"135 1","pages":"255-264"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86351173","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In The Nether World, published in 1889, Gissing portrays the squalid life of the working class in London through a very pessimistic vision of British society. The urban setting, which is used as a backdrop, also plays a crucial role in the creation of a universe akin to hell. The evocations of the landscape and of nature, which are rare but extremely efficient, therefore seem to serve the unfolding of a perfectly orchestrated narrative. Such evocations generate clusters of images which are first meant to convey some grim picture of reality but which also lead to a poetic and fleeting representation of the elements, a reverie on the « dung-heap » (a metaphor defining the naturalist novel) and on the flowers which grow from it.
{"title":"« This is Hell – Hell - Hell ! » : les éléments dans The Nether World de George Gissing","authors":"Fabienne Gaspari","doi":"10.4000/cve.2833","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/cve.2833","url":null,"abstract":"In The Nether World, published in 1889, Gissing portrays the squalid life of the working class in London through a very pessimistic vision of British society. The urban setting, which is used as a backdrop, also plays a crucial role in the creation of a universe akin to hell. The evocations of the landscape and of nature, which are rare but extremely efficient, therefore seem to serve the unfolding of a perfectly orchestrated narrative. Such evocations generate clusters of images which are first meant to convey some grim picture of reality but which also lead to a poetic and fleeting representation of the elements, a reverie on the « dung-heap » (a metaphor defining the naturalist novel) and on the flowers which grow from it.","PeriodicalId":41197,"journal":{"name":"CAHIERS VICTORIENS & EDOUARDIENS","volume":"34 1","pages":"113-126"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87030369","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Surprisingly enough, despite the fact that it is strongly associated with femininity, Elizabeth Barrett Browning has no use for water as an element in her narrative of Aurora Leigh’s progress as a poet in the eponymous poem. Fire is only used in its usual purifying function, for the male protagonist. But she does construct a complex architecture from the elements of earth and air. She starts with the generally accepted duality of earth, both nurturing and a symbol of death. She multiplies the associations with air : angels and squirrels, wind and mountains, to cite only a few. She then examines and redefines the relationships between these two elements in life and in poetry and finally reaches a mystical union anchored in the body.
{"title":"Entre air et terre : les éléments dans Aurora Leigh d’Elizabeth Barrett Browning","authors":"M. Camus","doi":"10.4000/CVE.2825","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/CVE.2825","url":null,"abstract":"Surprisingly enough, despite the fact that it is strongly associated with femininity, Elizabeth Barrett Browning has no use for water as an element in her narrative of Aurora Leigh’s progress as a poet in the eponymous poem. Fire is only used in its usual purifying function, for the male protagonist. But she does construct a complex architecture from the elements of earth and air. She starts with the generally accepted duality of earth, both nurturing and a symbol of death. She multiplies the associations with air : angels and squirrels, wind and mountains, to cite only a few. She then examines and redefines the relationships between these two elements in life and in poetry and finally reaches a mystical union anchored in the body.","PeriodicalId":41197,"journal":{"name":"CAHIERS VICTORIENS & EDOUARDIENS","volume":"15 1","pages":"37-48"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83399407","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The East and West dichotomy in “Karain” is in keeping with the romantic topos and underlined by the motif of the four elements. The vision of the sea, the sky and the island builds up an orientalist painting full of colours and light, and turns the Malay Archipelago into a mythic space to be opposed to the dreary and foggy representation of the West, an enclosed, corrupt and oppressive space paradoxically paralysed by economic and technological progress at the end of the Victorian era. However Conrad subverts the opposition by casting light on the illusion and artificiality of the representation and deconstructing the orientalist myth. The four elements first highlight the motif of human illusions and contribute to the symbolic function of the East ; they also serve a literary topos by enhancing the tragic muthos which is then immediately deconstucted ; the orientalist mode of representation is also called into question by impressionism, conveyed by fragmentation and the relativity of the point of view. The aestheticization of space in the orientalist painting clearly shows the decoy of representation and lets the reader have a glimpse of the reality of colonialism through the cracks of the painting. The four elements are subservient to Conrad’s imaginary vision, whose purpose was to make his reader hear, feel, and see the truth “below the surface of the visible universe” (The Nigger of the Narcissus), “disclosed in a moment of illusion” (Lord Jim) as in a trompe-l’œil. The truth is also that of a metaphysical void corresponding to the epistemological break at the turn of the century and the loss of faith and ideals.
{"title":"Les quatre éléments dans « Karain » de Joseph Conrad : du mythe au manque","authors":"C. Delmas","doi":"10.4000/CVE.2830","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/CVE.2830","url":null,"abstract":"The East and West dichotomy in “Karain” is in keeping with the romantic topos and underlined by the motif of the four elements. The vision of the sea, the sky and the island builds up an orientalist painting full of colours and light, and turns the Malay Archipelago into a mythic space to be opposed to the dreary and foggy representation of the West, an enclosed, corrupt and oppressive space paradoxically paralysed by economic and technological progress at the end of the Victorian era. However Conrad subverts the opposition by casting light on the illusion and artificiality of the representation and deconstructing the orientalist myth. The four elements first highlight the motif of human illusions and contribute to the symbolic function of the East ; they also serve a literary topos by enhancing the tragic muthos which is then immediately deconstucted ; the orientalist mode of representation is also called into question by impressionism, conveyed by fragmentation and the relativity of the point of view. The aestheticization of space in the orientalist painting clearly shows the decoy of representation and lets the reader have a glimpse of the reality of colonialism through the cracks of the painting. The four elements are subservient to Conrad’s imaginary vision, whose purpose was to make his reader hear, feel, and see the truth “below the surface of the visible universe” (The Nigger of the Narcissus), “disclosed in a moment of illusion” (Lord Jim) as in a trompe-l’œil. The truth is also that of a metaphysical void corresponding to the epistemological break at the turn of the century and the loss of faith and ideals.","PeriodicalId":41197,"journal":{"name":"CAHIERS VICTORIENS & EDOUARDIENS","volume":"34 1","pages":"89-100"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86102632","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Dickens’s preface to A Tale of Two Cities may lead his readers to consider the character of Richard Wardour (in Collins’s play The Frozen Deep) as the original model for Sydney Carton. Yet Sydney Carton appears as an altogether different type of hero, a falsely passive and indolent one. His ambiguous characterization shows a constant combination of the motifs of exclusion from and integration within a group, both at the diegetic and narrative levels. Sydney Carton’s oxymoronic characterization is never satisfactorily explained to the reader, and an analysis of the part he plays as Charles Darnay’s double simply emphasizes the motif of exclusion. An inter-textual reading of Dickens’s last novels tends to show that the double hero of A Tale of Two Cities marks the return of a familiar Dickensian figure : that of the man who is deprived of self-esteem and feels the constant urge to express the very poor opinion he has of himself, whilst at the same time finding modes of expression for something akin to passionate self-love. In that, Sydney Carton reminds one of Arthur Clennam (Little Dorrit), and announces the advent of later characters such as Pip (Great Expectations) and Eugene Wrayburn (Our Mutual Friend).
{"title":"« I am the Resurrection and the Life » : Sydney Carton, ou les modalités du retour d’une figure familière dans A Tale of Two Cities","authors":"Isabelle Hervouet-Farrar","doi":"10.4000/CVE.3077","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4000/CVE.3077","url":null,"abstract":"Dickens’s preface to A Tale of Two Cities may lead his readers to consider the character of Richard Wardour (in Collins’s play The Frozen Deep) as the original model for Sydney Carton. Yet Sydney Carton appears as an altogether different type of hero, a falsely passive and indolent one. His ambiguous characterization shows a constant combination of the motifs of exclusion from and integration within a group, both at the diegetic and narrative levels. Sydney Carton’s oxymoronic characterization is never satisfactorily explained to the reader, and an analysis of the part he plays as Charles Darnay’s double simply emphasizes the motif of exclusion. An inter-textual reading of Dickens’s last novels tends to show that the double hero of A Tale of Two Cities marks the return of a familiar Dickensian figure : that of the man who is deprived of self-esteem and feels the constant urge to express the very poor opinion he has of himself, whilst at the same time finding modes of expression for something akin to passionate self-love. In that, Sydney Carton reminds one of Arthur Clennam (Little Dorrit), and announces the advent of later characters such as Pip (Great Expectations) and Eugene Wrayburn (Our Mutual Friend).","PeriodicalId":41197,"journal":{"name":"CAHIERS VICTORIENS & EDOUARDIENS","volume":"97 1","pages":"287-298"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81438449","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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