Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1976. / Typescript. Also available in print.

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The aim of the submitted thesis is a comparison of symbolism of a double in Georges Rodenbach's Bruges-la-Morte and Romány tří mágů of Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic. We will focus maily on death as a key motif of literature at the fin de siècle and a motif that is, in works we are examining, closely linked with the existence of a double. We will inspect motif of a double in the context of psychological states of mind. The choice of compared texts was motivated by the process of self disintegration. The process of self disintegration is closely connected with the process of depersonalisation which appears when a subject makes contact with a soulful space or a object. Cities (Bruges, Venice, Prague) which are the scene of this self disintegration take a special place in the literature of symbolism as a urban space of art and death at once. Despite mutual relation of life and art, the strange tension, and the phenomenon of annihilation, is still present within this relation.

Esta pesquisa consiste em investigar como se articulam as noções de vida e valor na filosofia nietzschiana tardia. A relação entre essas noções se faz visível em Crepúsculo dos ídolos, quando Nietzsche critica a decadência por avaliar negativamente o valor da vida: o filósofo defende que a vida é o critério de avaliação das avaliações e criadora de valores, de modo a ser incoerente estabelecer qualquer juízo acerca dela. Contudo, questionamos se essa filosofia não seria passível das mesmas críticas por entender que o critério avaliativo é ele próprio criador de valores: averiguaremos se seria possível uma mesma vida criar valores e avaliá-los. No limite, sendo a decadência um modo de vida, objetamos como poderia a filosofia nietzschiana avaliá-la. Faremos ver que apenas um tipo de vida poderá ser simultaneamente critério de avaliação das avaliações e criadora de valores e que, portanto, poderá avaliar outras formas de vida, como a decadente / This researchs aim is to investigate how to articulate the notions of life and value in Nietzsche\'s late philosophy. The relation between these notions is visible in Twilight of idols, in which Nietzsche criticizes the decadence for negatively evaluating the value of life: the philosopher argues that life is the evaluation criterion of evaluation and creates values, so as to be incoherent to establish any judgment about it. However, we question whether this philosophy would not be liable to the same criticism for understanding the evaluative criteria is itself the creator of values: we will investigate whether it is possible for a same life to create values and evaluate them. If the decadence is a way of life, we question how Nietzschean philosophy could evaluate it. We will see that only one way of life can simultaneously be evaluation criteria of evaluation and create values and, therefore, can evaluate other forms of life, such as the decadent one

This thesis should solve the mystery of the synesthesia (especially on field of the theory of literature). The explanation of selected art schools of the second half of nineteenth century should anchor this phenomenon in the history of literature. The thesis analysis the concrete cases selected from the primary texts (collection of poems Zazděná okna, prose Román o Manfredu Macmillenovi and drama Sen o říši krásy). This analysis is based on the various types od synesthesia. The analysis prooved that this phenomenon does not only exist in the world literature, but it also exists in the Czech literature of that age. The comparison of the results extracted by Sean A. Day, Ph.D. was very interesting. This thesis examines also the colours and seing of the colours in the dreams. The work of Svetozar Nevole showed up useful. Although the work is almost 50 years younger than the primary literature, there were no big problems with adaptation of this theory for the primary texts.

Throughout British decadent literature, authors creatively experiment with religion. While part of this experimentation is a matter of how authors represent religious subjects or syncretized religious traditions, a much more foundational level of this experimentation seeks to redefine “the religious” altogether. Collectively, the authors in this study seek to redefine “religion” as focused around community, ritual, and aestheticism over creed or dogma. This new definition resonates with the way many twentieth-century sociologist, theologians, and psychoanalytic theorists have discussed the nature and role of religion in Western society, and I rely on these thinkers throughout my methodology. Also central to my methodology is my suggestion that the primary lens through which critics often read British decadence is the lens of experimentation and redefinition. It has been well established that British decadents creatively experimented with their representations of gender and sexuality, their use of genre, and their incorporation of Western philosophy, yet their treatment of religion—specifically the Western religious traditions which appear in their works—has been largely unexamined. This project argues that the British decadent authors’ creative treatment of religion is central to their works and to their broader experimental project. In my first chapter, I suggest that the experimental work that Pater does with philosophy, art theory, and genre has its roots in the experimental work he does with religion. Pater espouses a syncretic approach to religion which sees Christianity as the most recent, and most evolved, link in a series of conversant religious and philosophical traditions. At the same time, he opposes the institutionalization of religion as well as any violence that might take place in its name. In my second chapter, I claim that Oscar Wilde’s destabilization of language—separating words from their denotative meanings—lays the groundwork for his separation of religious ideology from the aesthetic and communal elements of religion. My third chapter argues that decadent religion, as imagined by Pater and Wilde, was not always easily integrated into religious life. I suggest that the sadomasochistic imagery seen throughout some of Francis Thompson’s works signifies a larger conflict between his attraction to decadence and his devotion to Catholicism. In the final chapter, I consider Vernon Lee, a woman writer who spent much of her life in Continental Europe. I claim that her position on the fringes of British, male, decadent society allowed her a unique vantage point, from which she repeatedly examined the decadent religious project even as she valued a secular, moral humanism over that project.

This thesis explores the motif of gastronomy in Fitzgerald's critically undertreated second novel, The Beautiful and Damned. Within the discussion of the leisure class, Fitzgerald scholars often focus on Jay Gatsby's parties, but they seem to neglect Anthony Patch and company's fancy for food and drink in Ivy League supper clubs of Manhattan, vaudeville theaters, and houses of languor in Upstate New York. Building upon George J. Searles's article "The Symbolic Function of Food and Eating in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and Damned," this thesis examines the meaning of Fitzgerald's pervasive "prandial allusions" and character psychology with regard to dining. Whereas Searles posits that Fitzgerald "employed depictions of food and eating as symbols of his characters' shallowness and frivolity" (14), this thesis explores the possibility that Anthony Patch craves "pleasant episodes" of dining and specific culinary combinations because he interprets them as the essence of social ritual and corporeal comfort. Because many critics hold that The Beautiful and Damned lacks coherence and sputters as a pre-Gatsby creation, this thesis suggests that the novel can be read as Anthony's quest to assert and cling to his own brand of decadence, which is tragically distinct from that of his wife Gloria's.

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Freie Univ., Diss.--Berlin, 2003.

This thesis explores how selected "decadent-dandyist" writers of late 19^th century France at once exemplify and subvert the self's act of shaping and imprinting its own selfhood upon the world: a model in which an autonomous, discrete artist-self freely creates, and in which both reader/audience and artistic "subjects" are treated as raw canvas and denied agency of their own. Storytellers like Barbey D'Aurevilly, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, J.K. Huysmans, and Remy de Gourmont create not only hyper-artificial, cloistered, "auto-telic" (to use Charles Taylor's term) textual worlds (e.g. Huysmans' theïbade raffinée) but also hyper-artificial selves: presenting themselves and their often autobiographical protagonists as dandy-artists for whom artistic creation is an extension of self-creation. Central to this thesis is the 19^th century figure of the dandy - he who, to quote D'Aurevilly, "[causes] surprise in others, and [has] the proud satisfaction of never showing any oneself." Appropriating the divine power of self-fashioning, the dandy transforms the chaos of existence into a clear narrative over which he alone exerts control, denying that he himself is subject to the control of the world. In my thesis, I first explore the cultural and economic roots of this understanding of the autonomous dandyist-artist in the light of wider tensions in 19^th century Paris. I then explore selected "decadent-dandyist" texts through close reading, focusing on the theological implications of our authors' treatment of narrative, character, setting, and language: showing how our writers cast doubt on both the possibility and morality "autonomous" creation on theological grounds. Finally, I ask how constructive theologians might learn from our authors' condemnation of "dandyist" storytelling to create a new Christian aesthetics for the novel: proposing elements of an alternate, "kenotic" novel, in which self-projection gives way to "self-giving", a model based not on power and ego but rather on love.