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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Fragments, Genius and Madness: Masks and Mask-Making in the fin-de-siècle Imagination

Fragments, Genius and Madness: Masks and Mask-Making in the fin-de-siècle Imagination

Segnini, Elisa

Paperback

Series: Studies in Comparative Literature, Book 56

Literary Criticism

ISBN10: 1781888582
ISBN13: 9781781888582
Publisher: Legenda
Published: Nov 20 2023
Pages: 204
Weight: 0.73
Height: 0.43 Width: 6.69 Depth: 9.61
Language: English

At the turn of the nineteenth century, as inquiries about degeneration shaped medical, sociological and anthropological discourses, masks flourished as portraits, ornaments, and disguises. This comparative study explores tales that revolve around masks and mask-making in relation to nineteenth-century thought, offering innovative readings of fictional and dramatic works by Max Beerbohm, Gabriele D'Annunzio, Jean Lorrain, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Andrey Bely, next to artefacts such as the plaster cast of the Inconnue de la Seine, the waxes of criminals held in Cesare Lombroso's museum, Rodin's 'horror masks' modelled after a Japanese dancer. In the fin-de-siècle imagination, the author argues, masks addressed two concepts: the repressed elements of the psyche and the perceived parameters of a declining phase in Western civilization. By uncovering the role of masks as key tropes in fin-de-siècle culture, this monograph also demonstrates to what extent the medical, anthropological and aesthetic spheres overlapped, offering insights that contribute to debates about gender and ethnicity in decadence and modernist studies.

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