Vernon Lee : decadence, ethics, aesthetics / edited by Patricia Pulham and Catherine Maxwell.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Pulham, Patricia, 1959-

Maxwell, Catherine, 1962-

Series:

Palgrave studies in nineteenth-century writing and culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Lee, Vernon, 1856-1935--Criticism and interpretation.

Lee, Vernon.

Lee, Vernon, 1856-1935.

Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

210 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm.

Place of Publication:

Basingstoke ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

Summary:

This timely book is the first collection of critical essays on Vernon Lee (Violet Paget, 1856-1935), the author of forty-three volumes, and a major literary figure and leading European cosmopolitan intellectual whose contribution to the literature and culture of the Victorian fin de siecle and to an emergent twentieth-century modernism is currently under re-evaluation. New light is shed on Lee's personal and professional relationships with contemporaries such as Eugene Lee-Hamilton, Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde and Bernard Berenson, and original and exciting approaches taken to key works including her essays on the Italian Renaissance, Euphorion (1884), two of her short stories of 'Oke of Okehurst' and 'Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady', her fascinating historical detective novel Louis Norbert (1914), her pacifist drama, The Ballet of the Nations (1915), and her innovative book on literary theory, The Handling of Words (1923). Using new archival material, this volume will be of interest to students and scholars of Victorian literature and culture, gay and lesbian studies, aesthetics, literary decadence, art history and women's studies, among others.

Contents:

Vernon Lee: A Brief Chronology xvi

Creative Connections

1 Vernon Lee and Eugene Lee-Hamilton / Catherine Maxwell 21

2 Vernon Lee and the Pater Circle / Laurel Brake 40

Decadent Dissolutions

3 'Warming Me Like a Cordial': The Ethos of the Body in Vernon Lee's Aesthetics / Catherine Anne Wiley 58

4 Vernon Lee, Decadent Contamination and the Productivist Ethos / Dennis Denisoff 75

Queer Contexts

5 Vernon Lee and the Gender of Aestheticism / Stefano Evangelista 91

6 The Snake Lady and the Bruised Bodley Head: Vernon Lee and Oscar Wilde in the Yellow Book / Margaret Stetz 112

7 Duality and Desire in Louis Norbert / Patricia Pulham 123

Art and Argument

8 Performing Pacifism: The Battle between Artist and Author in The Ballet of the Nations / Grace Brockington 143

9 Plural Anomalies: Gender and Sexuality in Bio-Critical Readings of Vernon Lee / Jo Briggs 160

10 The Handling of Words: Reader Response Victorian Style / Christa Zorn 174.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 193-204) and index.

ISBN:

1403992134

OCLC:

63703115

Publisher Number:

9781403992130