What constitutes “an era”? When does it begin? When does it end? Generally we might only expect to have specific answers about this or that Era or Epoch or Age or Period after the fact. We know these things—and we use these time-based terms—in the way we know History: looking backwards, always in retrospect. The last decade of the 19th century in England (and across Europe) was otherwise. A French expression—fin de siècle—penetrated nearly every language and came to suggest a general condition of physical exhaustion, depletion, a cultural—and physical—energy crisis. This condition spawned its own enthusiasts and exemplars—consider Oscar Wilde—and angry critics such as the German Max Nordau who castigated an entire generation in a book called (and I want to sustain something of a pun) Degeneration (1895). The Irish poet William Butler Yeats who survived the 1890s by 40 years looked back at his early contemporaries in that period as a “Tragic Generation.” In hindsight we might pin that label on the million Britons (and million French and million Germans…) who were murdered within a few years and within a few miles of each other along the Western Front after August 1914 in what they called The Great War. But we will forego hindsight and look at the Period as the Period saw itself. In order to understand what exactly was coming to an end in the last 15 years of the 19th century we will begin with a quick—and fragmentary—survey of ideas and impulses drawn from the middle of the 19th century (collected and presented electronically) and then concentrate our attention on a variety of major texts from the fin de siècle. Lecture, discussion, short essays written in and out of class.

TEXTS English 335a Spring 2010 Professor Butwin
Thomas Hardy Tess of the D’Urbervilles Penguin Books ISBN 9780141439594
Robert Lewis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Dover Thrift ISBN 0486266885
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray Dover Thrift ISBN 0486278077
Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent (1907) Dover Thrift ISBN: 0486419185
William Morris, News from Nowhere Penguin Books ISBN: 9780140433302