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Decadence and Mass Culture: The Novel as a Panorama. The Case of Bruges-La-Morte
Eduard Cairol
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DOI:10.17265/2159-5836/2015.07.001
Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
Today’s idea of the so-called fin-de-siècle is still somewhat inexact and incomplete. This lack of precision originates from a deeply rooted methodological approach which consists of considering the respective developments of literature, art, and science in isolation, without paying attention to any interference or reciprocal contamination. This defective method also affects the overlaps and contacts between high culture and popular culture. Despite the progress made over recent years, there are few researchers who approach their objective with a real awareness of the complexity of a time period which saw the appearance of mass culture in the current sense and an unprecedented boom in scientific and technological development. To this end, the example of the great German philosopher Walter Benjamin and his studies on Paris during the 19th century—collected in the essays on the great French poet Charles Baudelaire and especially in the monumental and unfinished work The Arcades Project—is, without doubt, a model to follow. Taking the path suggested by Benjamin, this article sets out a revision of the novel Bruges-la-Morte (1892) by the Belgian writer Georges Rodenbach, considered one of the major exponents of the fin-de-siècle decadence, which goes beyond the usual approach of a symbolist reading, by paying special attention to the frictions between literature and technology on one hand, and between literature and popular entertainment on the other.
fin-de-siècle, mass culture, Walter Benjamin, Georges Rodenbach, Bruges-la-Morte, symbolism, decadence, literature and technology
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