Fin De Siglo Research Articles

Strange Forces: Occultism and the Inauguration of the Fantastic Genre in Latin America

This article examines the relationship between the fin de siglo discourse of occultism and the origins of the fantastic genre in Latin America. Through an analysis of Eduardo Holmberg's 'Nelly' (1896) and Leopoldo Lugones's Las fuerzas extrañas (1906), I argue that these writers inaugurate the fantastic narrative as a means of investigating the mysterious phenomena of the occult sciences — the realm of ghosts and other 'strange forces' — thereby expressing one of the cultural preoccupations of the fin de siglo: the tension between scientific precepts and spiritual beliefs. The ghosts in Holmberg's novella bring in the mystery of spirit manifestations, pointing to the gaps in human knowledge and thereby subverting the hierarchies of truth that divorce science from fiction. Lugones's work, however, goes even further by problematizing the scientific laws of nature in order to create a new hierarchy of knowledge, as he closes Las fuerzas extrañas with an essay that lays out a whole set of occultist laws that purportedly govern reality. Hence, the fin de siglo fantastic sets the stage for a Latin American literary tradition, namely the prominence of literary modes that subvert realism in an attempt to articulate an alternative notion of reality itself.

Strange Forces: Occultism and the Inauguration of the Fantastic Genre in Latin America

This article examines the relationship between the fin de siglo discourse of occultism and the origins of the fantastic genre in Latin America. Through an analysis of Eduardo Holmberg's 'Nelly' (1896) and Leopoldo Lugones's Las fuerzas extrañas (1906), I argue that these writers inaugurate the fantastic narrative as a means of investigating the mysterious phenomena of the occult sciences — the realm of ghosts and other 'strange forces' — thereby expressing one of the cultural preoccupations of the fin de siglo: the tension between scientific precepts and spiritual beliefs. The ghosts in Holmberg's novella bring in the mystery of spirit manifestations, pointing to the gaps in human knowledge and thereby subverting the hierarchies of truth that divorce science from fiction. Lugones's work, however, goes even further by problematizing the scientific laws of nature in order to create a new hierarchy of knowledge, as he closes Las fuerzas extrañas with an essay that lays out a whole set of occultist laws that purportedly govern reality. Hence, the fin de siglo fantastic sets the stage for a Latin American literary tradition, namely the prominence of literary modes that subvert realism in an attempt to articulate an alternative notion of reality itself.

Poetry, Psychology, and Madness in Fin de Siglo Spain: The Early Work of Juan Ramón Jiménez

Poetry, Psychology, and Madness in <I>Fin de Siglo</I> Spain: The Early Work of Juan Ramón Jiménez

Poetry, Psychology, and Madness in Fin de Siglo Spain: The Early Work of Juan Ramón Jiménez

The literary practice of the 1890s in Spain saw a resurgence of interest in the inner world of the Imagination. The process of analysing the artistic mind became systematic and self-conscious but, rather than employ aesthetic criteria, artists began to adopt the discourses of scientific and medical authority. The present article examines this phenomenon in the context of the debates concerning the nature of mental processes outlined by Wilhelm Wundt and the descriptions of abnormal mental processes and madness advanced by Cesare Lombroso and Max Nordau in their construction of the artist-genius. The article focuses upon the cultural background to the debate and, in some detail, on the way in which Juan Ramón Jiménez employs medical discourses to construct his own image of the artist. The poet's experience in the care of leading consultants in. Le Bouscat and Madrid between 1900 and 1903 is traced, his knowledge of and relationships with specialists in the field of mental medicine in France and Spain is established, to argue that Jiménez naturalized his medical knowledge into his artistic practice. The genius, far from being presented as the marginalized and transgressive figure constructed by Lombroso and Nordau, was reconfigured in a very positive way. Similarly, the impact of Wundt has a specific effect upon the process of recording feelings and emotions in Juan Ramón's poetry. This acculturation of medical discourses is unlike other Foucauldian revisions in the fin de siglo where binary constructs seek to subvert one another. Rather the two supposedly antagonistic forces of Positivism and Idealism meet and interpenetrate. The fascination with medical discourses, in fact, paved the way for their aesthetisization in literary writing. We witness a fundamental ambiguity in the constitution of the time where the discourses of medicine, far from barring the way for aesthetic excess, actually provide a rich source for its continuation.

The Many Voices of Emilia Serrano, Baronesa de Wilson, Spain's Forgotten "Cantora de las Américas"

In America en fin de siglo (1897), Spain's Emilia Serrano de Wilson explained that her long years of travel and study in virtually every New World nation were intended to contribute to an Ibero-American union that would be estrecha, tan intima, tan grande y litil para todos como inquebrantable (133). A woman of exceptional energy and vision, she traveled on her own and published numerous books about her experiences and New World realities. Like many woman writers of her time, Serrano de Wilson has been virtually forgotten. For this remarkable Cantora de las Americas, retrieval from obscurity has been hindered by the fact that she lived and published in so many different countries that no single national literary tradition has come forward to restore her legacy. Her writings-prolific, diffuse and heterogeneous in character-are rich sources of information for social historians and for literary and feminist scholars.

El consumo, un fenómeno social complejo de fin de siglo

The author of this paper addresses the phenomenon of consumption in general, and as the product of a historically determined process that is organized according to the needs of production and reproduction of capital, then and from this context, characterizing it in its complexity. It differs consumption as a social phenomenon and the result of a specific process linked to the needs of realization and expansion of capital in its historical development, rather than as a strictly markets logic or individual phenomenon. While historical category, it is noted that it is from the second half of the twentieth century that large companies, mainly American, modify their strategies focusing on new technologies of trade promotion and consumption, as technological innovations are developed to a relatively smaller than those relating to the product speed.

Hispanic Modernismo in the Context of European Symbolism — Towards a Comparative Dekon‐struction

The confrontation of the terms generation of 1898 and modernismo emerges as one of the most controversial questions in the history of modern Spanish literature. In this article the problem is examined through the ideological dichotomies proposed by some scholars during the Dictatorship to argue that any discourse must be considered within the power structures which control it. Thus, the cultural scene of the late nineteeth century should be seen as a succession of readings. A deconstructive reading enables one to effect an a priori reconstruction of the period which seeks, from hermeneutics, another possible interpretation based on comparative criteria. Deconstruction questions the binary oppositions (modernismo v. noventayocho) and appropriately offers an hypothesis which shows how comparative literature, contained within a new paradigm, links critical theory with history. In this way and employing the polysystem theory of Even‐Zohar. the Spanish fin de siglo might be studied in the context of other Hispanic modernismos (Catalan, Galician, Basque and Latin American) and compared with European Symbolism. This dynamic and heterogeneous approach converts Hispanic modernismo into a movement of constant instability that questions the triple scheme of generationmovement and period to open a wider perspective that might be linked with Modernity.

The Exquisite Slave: The Role of Clothes in the Making of the Victorian Woman

To nineteenth-century writers the phrase "clothes make the man" was no empty cliche, but a profound and perceptive truth about the workings of society. For Thomas Carlyle in Sartor Resartus, clothes were not mere aesthetic ornament, but emblems of society's hierarchy and symbols of the spirit. "Man's earthly interests," he observes, "are hooked and buttoned together and held up by clothes."1 Not only could clothing transform a person's appearance, it could influence the actions and attitudes of both the wearer and the viewer. As Thackeray demonstrates in his Paris Sketch Book of 1840, it is Louis XIV's dress that transforms a "little lean, shrivelled, paunchy old man, of five feet two" into the magnificent, imposing Sun King. With shrewd insight into the influence of dress, Thackeray notes that Louis's sartorial splendor both enhanced his own self-image and impressed his viewers.2 Garments, in other words, signal to the world the role the wearer may be expected to play and remind the wearer of the responsibilities of that role, its constraints and limitations. That dress acts as a means of communication is a view