Copyright

Evanghelia Stead

Published On

2024-10-11

Page Range

pp. 1–12

Language

  • English

Print Length

12 pages

Introduction

Breaking the Mould of Victorianism

Close reading of “A New Poster” by Evelyn Sharp, a Yellow-Book story after Beardsley's dismissal from the periodical, stresses the importance of indirect strategies, hidden references and messages, details and oblique treatment in the British fin de siècle and in Beardsley's work. The introduction argues that Beardsley's art is not to be taken at face value. It underscores his rapid ascent thanks to the media, occasioning exceptional artistic influence in five short creative years and remarkable fame both in bohemian and bourgeois contexts. It calls attention to Beardsley's renewal of the grotesque, revitalisation of marginalia, performance, witty use of monstrous self-portraits and masterly command in Britain and beyond through the burgeoning network of periodicals. It approaches the subject through an interdisciplinary methodology bringing together art, literature, differential comparative studies, print culture and periodical studies.

Contributors

Evanghelia Stead

(author)
Professor of Comparative Literature and Print Culture at Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines

Linguist, literary translator and honorary Fellow of the Institut Universitaire de France, Evanghelia Stead is Professor of Comparative Literature and Print Culture at the Université de Versailles-Saint-Quentin (UVSQ Paris-Saclay). In 2023 she brought the TIGRE seminar on literature, visual and print culture to UVSQ, which she had been running in Paris at the École Normale Supérieure (Department of the Arts) since 2004. She has been honoured internationally with visiting professorships at Marburg and Verona Universities, and won numerous sponsored research fellowships (CNRS, EURIAS/FRIAS, IUF, Beinecke). She has published extensively on fin-de-siècle culture, periodicals, history of the book, literature and iconography, Greek and Latin myths in modern literature, and the literary tradition of ‘the Thousand and Second Night.’ A well-known specialist on fin-de-siècle art and culture, she has also developed methodologies for periodical studies, expertise on reading books as cultural objects, reading with images, and through literature-related visual art.