Kostas Boyiopoulos – författare

Our collection of essays re-evaluates the much critically contested term of Modernism that, eventually, came to be used of the dominant, or paradigmatic, strain of literary discourse in early-twentieth-century culture. Modernism as a category is one which is constantly challenged, hybridised, and fractured by voices operating from inside and outside the boundaries it designates. These concerns are reflected by those figures addressed by our contributors’ chapters, which include Rupert Brooke, G. K. Chesterton, E.M. Forster, Thomas Hardy, M. R. James, C.L.R James, Vernon Lee, D.H. Lawrence, Richard La Galliene, Pamela Colman Smith, Arthur Symons, and H.G. Wells. Alert to these disturbing voices or unsettling presences that vex accounts of an emergent Modernism in late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century literary cultures predominately between 1890-1939, our volume questions traditional critical mappings, taxonomies, and periodisations of this vital literary cultural moment. Our volume is equally sensitive to how the avant garde felt for those living and writing within the period with a view to offering a renewed sense of the literary and cultural alternatives to Modernism.

Our collection of essays re-evaluates the much critically contested term of Modernism that, eventually, came to be used of the dominant, or paradigmatic, strain of literary discourse in early-twentieth-century culture. Modernism as a category is one which is constantly challenged, hybridised, and fractured by voices operating from inside and outside the boundaries it designates. These concerns are reflected by those figures addressed by our contributors’ chapters, which include Rupert Brooke, G. K. Chesterton, E.M. Forster, Thomas Hardy, M. R. James, C.L.R James, Vernon Lee, D.H. Lawrence, Richard La Galliene, Pamela Colman Smith, Arthur Symons, and H.G. Wells. Alert to these disturbing voices or unsettling presences that vex accounts of an emergent Modernism in late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century literary cultures predominately between 1890-1939, our volume questions traditional critical mappings, taxonomies, and periodisations of this vital literary cultural moment. Our volume is equally sensitive to how the avant garde felt for those living and writing within the period with a view to offering a renewed sense of the literary and cultural alternatives to Modernism.

Explores culturally significant encounters between sensuality and artificiality in the poetry of Wilde, Symons, and Dowson. This book enquires into the problem of venerating artificiality and the inaccessibility of beauty associated with it whilst engaging in the sensuous, immediate experience as it is advocated by Walter Pater. It examines for the first time together poems by three protagonists of the 1890s: Oscar Wilde, Arthur Symons, and Ernest Dowson. It sees their poems as sites where the self sensually collides with or is immersed in their artifice. This is understood through the shift from Aestheticism to Decadence, which is marked by a greater emphasis on heterodox erotic experience. This study examines Wilde’s early poetry and its role in triggering this shift. It shows how the idea of an erotic encounter with artifice reaches its apex in Symons, and how in Dowson it ripens into vexed non-encounters. Key Features• The first monograph study to focus exclusively on Decadent poetry • Gives original attention to Oscar Wilde’s poetry which has been relatively neglected • Makes an explicit distinction between ‘Aestheticism’ and ‘Decadence’• Includes a Coda which considers how this Decadent poetics transmutes in Modernism.Kostas Boyiopoulos is Teaching Associate at the Department of English Studies, Durham University. His main research specialisms are fin-de-siècle literature and culture, Decadence and Aestheticism, and Anglo-Continental literary transactions. He is a co-editor of The Decadent Short Story: An Annotated Anthology (Edinburgh UP, 2014) and, with Mark Sandy, of the forthcoming essay collection Decadent Romanticism (Ashgate, 2015). He has published articles on late Victorian and Modernist topics.

Explores culturally significant encounters between sensuality and artificiality in the poetry of Wilde, Symons, and Dowson. This book enquires into the problem of venerating artificiality and the inaccessibility of beauty associated with it whilst engaging in the sensuous, immediate experience as it is advocated by Walter Pater. It examines for the first time together poems by three protagonists of the 1890s: Oscar Wilde, Arthur Symons, and Ernest Dowson. It sees their poems as sites where the self sensually collides with or is immersed in their artifice. This is understood through the shift from Aestheticism to Decadence, which is marked by a greater emphasis on heterodox erotic experience. This study examines Wilde’s early poetry and its role in triggering this shift. It shows how the idea of an erotic encounter with artifice reaches its apex in Symons, and how in Dowson it ripens into vexed non-encounters. Key Features• The first monograph study to focus exclusively on Decadent poetry • Gives original attention to Oscar Wilde’s poetry which has been relatively neglected • Makes an explicit distinction between ‘Aestheticism’ and ‘Decadence’• Includes a Coda which considers how this Decadent poetics transmutes in Modernism.Kostas Boyiopoulos is Teaching Associate at the Department of English Studies, Durham University. His main research specialisms are fin-de-siècle literature and culture, Decadence and Aestheticism, and Anglo-Continental literary transactions. He is a co-editor of The Decadent Short Story: An Annotated Anthology (Edinburgh UP, 2014) and, with Mark Sandy, of the forthcoming essay collection Decadent Romanticism (Ashgate, 2015). He has published articles on late Victorian and Modernist topics.