Goldsmiths, University of London: Journals Online
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‘A series of variations on a theme’: Reinvention and Amplification of Decadence in Jeremy Reed’s Dorian: A Sequel
Full text linkThis article examines for the first time Jeremy Reed’s novel Dorian: A Sequel (1997). Reed is a queer British writer primarily of poetry, and of lyrical, experimental fiction. He is influenced by a range of figures, including the French Symbolists of the nineteenth century, David Bowie, J. G. Ballard, and others. Dorian: A Sequel is an overlooked, important neo-Victorian response to Oscar Wilde’s novel, and one that predates Will Self’s more famous Dorian: An Imitation (2002). Even though Reed’s Dorian is set in 1897, it amalgamates the fin de siècle and the twentieth century, and even has Dorian encountering Wilde himself. The novel transcends nostalgia and presents a forward-looking, innovative vision of Wildean decadence, one that is amplified in its intertextual artificiality. Through a series of rhetorical gestures and tropes of self-reflexivity, retconning, anachronism, and narrative metalepsis, this article demonstrates how Reed’s decadence imitates and reinvents not just Wilde’s text but its integral formulas of imitation and reinvention
Hanging out with ‘Archival Al’: Decadent Community in Neo-Victorian Comics
No full textThis article explores neo-Victorian allusions to verbal and visual materials from the fin de siècle in the first two volumes of The League of Extraordinary Gentleman comics by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill (1999-2003). Drawing on recent work by Matthew Potolsky and others, I argue that Moore and O’Neill enact a form of an imagined community that would have been familiar to nineteenth-century writers and artists such as J.-K. Huysmans, Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley. In this way, I claim that The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen affirms the value of neglected counter-cultural elements from late-Victorian decadence. At the same time it also offers a critique of various reactionary attempts to return to conservative Victorian values. Moore and O’Neill draw upon the unsettling power of nineteenth-century decadent aesthetics to probe and question ideologies of gender, sexuality and race
Review: Tim Mitchell, Albert Mérat, Rimbaud’s Seer (Celesta, 2023)
Full text linkReview: Tim Mitchell, Albert Mérat, Rimbaud’s Seer (Celesta, 2023)
‘Do you feel like a hero yet?’: Spec Ops, Call of Duty and the Problems of Playing Soldier
Full text linkDuring the Global War on Terror the modern military shooter became one of the most popular genres of video games. This article examines the way modern combat was portrayed in Spec Ops: The Line in contrast to its genre contemporaries, particularly the Call of Duty franchise. It articulates that despite the game’s commercial failure it asserted itself as an important historical document for analysing media portrayals of modern warfare. By questioning the ethics of military video games, and the role of the player themselves, Spec Ops functions as a locus for new perspectives on the video game industry
War Cemeteries and the Thai-Burma Railway: The Construction of Collective Memories of the Asia-Pacific War in Thailand
Full text linkThe Japan-Thai Pact of Alliance and Thailand’s declaration of war on Britain and the USA created ambiguity in later memories of the Second World War in Thailand. This article investigates the formation of a Thai collective memory of the war between 1945 and 1963. It argues that the construction of Prisoner of War (POW) cemeteries, the reopening of the Thai-Burma railway, the publication of anglophone and Thai memoirs during this period became the foundation for the establishment of a narrative directed toward Thai nationals and foreign tourists, that positioned Thailand as a country undefeated in war
Gedanken zu einem Fragment (German version)
Full text linkAls Kind war ich fest entschlossen, Archäologe zu werden - jemand, der versteckte, oft zerbrochene, manchmal schöne Dinge ausgräbt, die wie Linsen wirken. Dinge, die uns helfen, die Vergangenheit zu betrachten und besser zu verstehen. Ich muss etwa acht Jahre alt gewesen sein, als ich ein Fragment eines Puttenkopfes aus einer baufälligen, überwucherten Trockenmauer in meiner Straße barg. Ihm fehlte der obere Teil, der Stein war durch die Augenlinie hindurch gespalten (Abb. 1). Trotz Suchen blieb der fehlende Teil des Kopfes, einschließlich des größten Teils der Augenpartie, verloren. Ich erinnere mich wie wichtig es mir war, ihn mitzunehmen, ihn vor dem Vergessen zu „retten", ihm Würde und ein Zuhause zu geben. Und ich erinnere mich an meinen starken Wunsch, ihn weiter zu betrachten.
Fünf Jahrzehnte später muss ich gegenüber meinem jüngeren Ich zugeben, dass ich nicht Archäologe, sondern Kunstpsychotherapeut geworden bin. Als Beruf hat er vielleicht viel mit der Archäologie gemeinsam. Fragmentierte mentale und emotionale psychische Anteile zu halten, Erinnerungssplittern - oder dem, was man für Erinnerungen hält – zu helfen, an die Oberfläche zu dringen und sich durch das Schaffen von Kunst zu transformieren, ist eine Art Archäologie
Decadent Paradigms: Il piacere by Gabriele D’Annunzio
Full text linkThis article analyses Gabriele D’Annunzio’s Il piacere (1889) as a paradigm of decadence, and as a work that projects its long shadow on neo-decadence. Acknowledged as a decadent work soon after its publication, Il piacere was heavily bowdlerized when translated into English. Many paradigmatic elements of decadence are present: human beings described as artworks, in parallel with sentient objects, both collected as bibelots and dispersed in auctions; nobility vs. vulgarity; decadence in the theatrical settings of Roman gardens and cemeteries, where shadows of dead artists materialize. Rome, in D’Annunzio’s novel, is the corrupt Byzantine setting where decadence, moral dissolution and quiet despair can be effectively staged
Japanese Manga Adaptations of Oscar Wilde’s Salome
Full text linkOscar Wilde’s Salome has always been a popular play in Japan, where many adaptations have been made in various media, including manga. Interestingly, most of the manga adaptations are written by women. One unique idiosyncrasy of such manga adaptations is that they characterize Salome not as a dreadful femme fatale, but as an adolescent girl with vulnerability and subjectivity, struggling to escape from the violent order of patriarchy: while visually and thematically approaching Western decadence in their aesthetic escapism based on the suspect on social modernization, Japanese female manga artists, through their dramatization of women’s subjectivity, have unintentionally criticized their fin-de-siècle artists’ misogyny. On the other hand, by adopting Wilde’s ironical perspective on Salome’s romantic imagination for love and self-empowering affirmation of femininity, they have self-reflectively explored the genre limitations and potential of female-oriented manga, which has always struggled between heteronormative conventionality with the dominance of the romantic love plot, and feminist expressions of women’s discontent with androcentric society. This essay will consider the reciprocal interpretations of Wilde’s aesthetics and Japanese female-oriented manga regarding gender and sexuality by analyzing two manga adaptations of Salome by female artists, Teradate Kazuko and Maki Miyako
Review: Sarah Green, Sexual Restraint and Aesthetic Experience in Victorian Literary Decadence, Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023)
Full text linkReview: Sarah Green, Sexual Restraint and Aesthetic Experience in Victorian Literary Decadence, Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023)
Landscape and emotion in modern First World War cinema: Representations of the British soldier in nature
Full text linkThis article examines landscape representations in twenty first century First World War cinema. Spanning 2011’s War Horse and ten subsequent British and American productions, it demonstrates the appeal to filmmakers of not only dramatizing the First World War generally, but dramatizing the Western Front landscape in varied ways. While intentions no doubt vary, these choices reflect discussions in British soldiers’ written accounts of the emotional connections these men felt with particular spaces. The article is structured under three themes, ‘Nostalgia’, ‘Endurance’, and ‘Memory’, and concludes that such cinematic scenes powerfully visualise the role war landscapes played as a coping mechanism for soldiers