Jeering Dreamers. Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's. L'Eve Future at our Fin de Siecle
Jeering Dreamers. Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's. L'Eve Future at our Fin de Siecle By Alain Raitt Anzalone; John Preface by Alain RAITT Anzalone
1996 | 210 Pages | ISBN: 9051839391 | PDF | 9 MB
1996 | 210 Pages | ISBN: 9051839391 | PDF | 9 MB
The re-emergence in recent years of Villiers de l'Isle-Adam as a key figure in fin de si�cle literature can be attributed in large part to the intense interest his prescient l'Eve future (1886) has generated among scholars. In effect, the novel confronts with breathtaking focus central taboos and ambivalences about the decadent period. It posits an inescapable, mechanistic linkage between desire and technology; it suggests the constructed nature of gender; it casts woman down so as to exalt her, even as it intimates the arbitrariness and fragility of the empowerment prerogatives implicit in such an operation. It is this mine for the study of fin de si�cle mentalities that the present volume explores.Begun at the 1992 NCFS colloquium at Binghamton University as a collective project of the Friends of Villiers, Jeering Dreamers brings together 13 essays by Villiers scholars from both sides of the Atlantic. Their work promises, in the words of the eminent Villi�rien Alan Raitt, to '�clairer l'Eve future d'un jour nouveau-ou, plus exactement, de plusieurs jours nouveaux.