Reading Fin de Siecle Fictions [Paperback]

The fin de si?cle, the period 1880-1914, long associated with decadence and with the literary movements of aestheticism and symbolism, has received renewed critical interest recently. The essays in this volume form a valuable introduction to fin de si?cle cultural studies and provide a commentary on important aspects of current critical debate and the place of culture in society.
General Editors' Preface  Acknowledgements  1. Introduction  2. Nina Auerback, Magi and Maidens: The Romance of the Victorian Freud  3. Sandra M Gilbert, Rider Haggard's Heart of Darkness  4. Linda Dowling, The Decadent and the New Woman in the 1890s  5. Stephen Heath, Psychopathia Sexualis: Stevenson's Strange Case  6. Richard Dellamora, Homosexual Scandal and Compulsory Heterosexuality in the 1890s  7. Ed Cohen, Writing Gone Wilde: Homoerotic Desires in th Closet of Representation  8. Jonathan Dollimore, Different Desires: Subjectivity and Transgression in Wilde and Gide  9. Daniel Pick, 'Terrors of the night': Dracula and 'degeneration' in the late ninetheenth century  10. Elaine Showalter, Syphilis, Sexuality and the Fiction of the Fin de Siecle  11. Patrick Brantlinger, Imperial Gothic: Atavism and the Occult in the British Adventure Novel, 1880-1914  12. Benita Parry, The Content and Discontents of Kipling's Imperialism  13. Edward Said, Conrad's Heart of Darkness and the Histories of Empire  Bibliography  Index

Pykett's book is a valuable contribution to the study of late-Victorian fictions. Taken together, the essays constitute a varied, interdisciplinary synopsis of the cultural history of the fin de siecle, and they introduce scholal“0