The eighteen nineties

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Gutenberg ID

78936

Title

The eighteen nineties

Language

en

Book source

Project Gutenberg

Description max 80 words

The Eighteen Nineties is a book by Holbrook Jackson that explores the literary and artistic movements of the late 19th century in England. The book delves into the decadence movement, which was characterized by an emphasis on individualism, aestheticism, and a rejection of traditional values. Key figures such as Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley, and John Davidson are examined for their contributions to this movement.

Summary up to 500 words

The Eighteen Nineties is a comprehensive exploration of the literary and artistic movements that defined England in the late 19th century. The book delves into the decadence movement, which was marked by an emphasis on individualism, aestheticism, and a rejection of traditional values. Key figures such as Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley, and John Davidson are examined for their contributions to this movement. The book also explores the impact of French romanticism and the influence of writers like Théophile Gautier and Charles Baudelaire on English literature. Through a detailed analysis of literary works and artistic movements, Jackson provides a nuanced understanding of the cultural and intellectual landscape of late 19th-century England. The decadence movement in English art was the final outcome of the romantic movement which began near the dawn of the nineteenth century. It was the mortal ripening of that flower which blossomed upon the ruins of the French Revolution, heralding not only the rights of man, but the rights of personality, of unique, varied and varying men. The French romanticists, led by Victor Hugo, recognised this in their glorification of Napoleon; but fear and hatred of the great Emperor generated in the hearts of the ruling classes in this country and propagated among the people prevented the idea from gaining acceptance here. At the same time decadence was neither romantic nor classic; its existence in so far as it was dependent upon either of those art traditions was dependent upon both. The decadents were romantic in their antagonism to current forms, but they were classic in their insistence upon new. And it must not be forgotten that far from being nihilistic in aim they always clung, at times with desperation, to one already established art-form or another. The French artists of the first revolutionary period depended as much upon the traditions of Greek Greece and Rome as those of the revolution of July, and the poets of Britain, led by Walter Scott and Byron, depended upon the traditions of medieval feudalism. Romanticism was a reshuffling of ideals and ideas and a recreation of forms; it was renascent and novel. It could be both degenerate and regenerate, and contain at the same time many more contradictions, because at bottom it was a revolt of the spirit against formal subservience to mere reason. The romantic spirit in the art of Sir Walter Scott saw no inconsistency between the folk-soul and the ideals of chivalry and nobility; that taught Wordsworth to reveal simplicity as, in Oscar Wilde’s words, “the last refuge of complexity”; that inspired John Keats with a new classicism in Endymion brighter than anything since A Midsummer Night’s Dream , and Comus , and a new medievalism in The Eve of St Agnes fairer than Àll Olympus’ faded hierarchy. It taught Shelley that the most strenuous and the most exalted individual emphasis was not necessarily antagonistic to a balanced communal feeling, and that the heart of Dionysos could throb and burn in the form of Apollo; and above all it...

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