Author : Kirsten B. Ellicson
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (896 download)
Book Synopsis Collecting as Self-Exploration in Late 19th-Century French Literature by : Kirsten B. Ellicson
Download or read book Collecting as Self-Exploration in Late 19th-Century French Literature written by Kirsten B. Ellicson and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Huysmans and Loti, there is still great faith in material objects and the artful arrangement of them to satisfy desires, to be the answer to the quest, to fill the lack, to lead one inward, to solve problems. Already, by the end of the 1880s, the window of earnest self-exploration through collecting, as exemplified by Huysmans and Loti, will close. In Oscar Wilde's 1890 novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, which became well-known and widely read in France at the time of its publication, collecting in Wilde's text becomes implicated in hiding the truth of oneself. In Huysmans' and Loti's depictions of collecting art, art objects and other elements, there is, in contrast, a sense of profitable, fruitful exploration of self, rather than a fear of self-exploration. The collecting they portray is a way of coming to be at home in one's own mind--seeking not originality but simply the articulation of one's own perspective.