GLOSSARY UNIT 1

1 Unless otherwise noted, all definitions are extracted from Zamorano and García
Lorenzo, The Need to Make it New… A couple of them come from Modern and Contemporary
American Literature, by the same authors, and are noted (NAL).

Absurd: One final technique Wilde employs in this comedy is the absurd, as when
Algernon states “one cannot forget that one is married”.
Ambiguity: The ambiguity and flexibility implied by the theory of relativity allowed
the expression of the ambiguity and flexibility intuitively felt in language. Modern writing
thus constantly plays with the suspicion that language can never be fixed and that
meaning, to see it from Jacques Derrida’s viewpoint, is always deferred. Therefore, through
the repetition of a word the multiple and, in theory, infinite meaning is always somewhere
else. This implies that language, and not the story, is the most important feature in
literature.
Avant-garde: Describes ideas, styles, and methods that are very original or modern
in comparison to the period in which they happen (Cambridge).
City: In this period, this economic movement from landownership to a modern urban
economy was based on trade and on manufacturing. This accelerated the migration from
the countryside to the cities. Several results of this migration: 1) A stimulus towards the
development of ‘city’ professions such as law, accountancy and management. 2) The
growth of horrifying slums and cramped terraced housing in the overcrowded cities. By
1900, 80% of the population lived in cities, ‘organised’ into geographical zones based on
social class: the poor in the inner city, the better-off living away from the city centre, giving
way to a growth of middle-class suburbs. This was made possible by the expansion of
suburban rail transport. Some suburban rail companies were required by law to provide
cheap trains for commuters to travel into the city centre. The very notion of ‘time’,
because of the expansion of the railway, changed: it was standardised in order to create a
timetable based on London’s time.
Comedy: Wilde is relying upon his audience’s familiarity with Restoration comedy
(1660-1700) and later comedy of manners (social habits and customs), especially those of
the upper classes (Congreve and Sheridan, or Austen in the novel).
Darwinism: Darwinism did not remain a purely scientific discourse. Very soon it
spread, and permeated other spheres of knowledge such as the social sciences or
anthropology. Reproduction and the survival of the fittest, not rational thought or spiritual
belief, became recognised as the forces behind human endeavour.
Drama: It is the form of literature written for performance. The term is also used in a
more general way, to refer to one of the three major literary genres (Goodman). The stage at
the time of Wilde presented what was called ‘Society Drama,’ that is, plays of modern life
set in the rarefied world of the upper classes. These plays could be witty and frivolous light
comedies; or they could be ponderous dramatic treatises on difficult social issues, most
often the sexual ‘double standard’ and the ‘problem’ of the ‘fallen woman.’ Key terms In
Eng. Lit. III.
Incongruity: Among the comic techniques Wilde employs we should highlight his use
of incongruity (that is, there exists a great distance between what the audience expects to
happen and what actually happens).
Machine: The 1851 Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in London served to display
the progress of a nation that had achieved a leading role in the international sphere.
Crystal Palace became the temple of the machine where to find breathtaking works of
engineering, the most amazing technical discoveries, the wonders of industrial enterprise,
and the most innovative works of art that were meant to show that Romanticism had been
overcome.
Modern: What is New in the ‘Modern Era? The modern period in literature is
considered to run from the 16th century onwards. The word ‘modern’ according to the
Oxford English Dictionary stems from the Latin modo which means “just now”, and the
most immediate definition provided reads: “Of or pertaining to the present and recent times
as opposed to the remote past” (OED). For instance, in the 15th centrury, modo, or better
still modernus, referred to the Christian present as opposed to the Roman past. Referring to
the ‘modern era’ in relation to the Victorian past works as a means to involve the reader in
the period rather than her/his looking at it from a distance. In any case, it is always risky
to refer under a single heading to the period covered in this course: the fin de siècle, the
Edwardian period and the Georgian period. Notice that this textbook does not deal solely
with Modernism (a term that has itself been and still is subject of debate) as the word
‘modern’ may imply, but it also explores other forms of writing and avant-garde movements
present on the artistic scene between the 1880s and the Second World War.
New Woman: (NAL) The figure of the «New Woman» as a social and literary type
emerged at the end of the nineteenth century, a time when the economic and social order
was rapidly changing. The expression «New Woman,» as it came to be known in the
eighteen nineties, referred to those women who had begun to be fully aware of the
limitations imposed on women on account of their sex. They were middle-class women who
reached higher education, entered the business world, and claimed economic and social
independence as they rejected those restrictive values and roles traditionally identified with
womanhood. In this respect they consciously involved themselves in activities or attitudes
conventionally understood as masculine, ranging from smoking to sexual freedom. The
First World War accentuated social and economic transformations, when a noteworthy part
of the male population was drafted and their workplaces were taken over by women who
became equal participants in production, consumption and leisure. In short, conscious
choice became a characterizing feature of the New Woman, a capacity that female authors
would fully explore in their works between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Parody: A work that uses the conventions of a particular genre with the aim of
comically mocking a topos, a genre or a particular exponent of a genre (Norton). The play
(The importance…) has often been described as a brilliant satire (satire uses comedy not as
an end in itself but as a weapon to deride) and praised for its use of parody based on
aphorisms, often to do with marriage (Algernon’s line that ‘Divorces are made in Heaven’).
These aphorisms, also called epigrams, mock our own preconceived ideas about marriage,
which is generally viewed as a sacrosanct institution The clearest example of parody occurs
when Gwendolen states that the home is “the proper sphere for the man,” which is of
course a reversal of one of the most striking maxims of the time.
Play: Standard drama text (Goodman). A piece of writing that is intended to be acted
in a theatre or on radio or television (Cambridge). Key terms In Eng. Lit. III 3
Pun: A humorous use of a word or phrase that has several meanings or that sounds
like another word (Cambridge). One of the ways Wilde’s wit manifests itself is in puns
(plays on words), like the one in the title, for running throughout the entire play is the
double meaning behind the word earnest, which functions homonymously both as a male
name and as an adjective describing seriousness.
Real reality: The reality that exists beyond appearances.
Time: Through Nietzsche’s ‘eternal recurrence’, linear time is questioned and
undermined. Linear progression is itself less important than the fact of constant repetition
of a particular action. The concept of ‘eternal recurrence’ brings two dimensions of time,
namely cyclical time and eternal time. Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (1925) and James
Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) both contain a circular structure that breaks the linear progression
of the narrative. In ‘eternal recurrence’ the concept of cyclical time is present in the idea
of repetition or recurrence, and that of eternal time in the very fact that that repetition will
happen for ever. A Newtonian universe found expression in the realist novel, where a
reliable narrator can render the observations of a world that responds to consistent and
empirical laws and which progresses according to a chronological pattern of linear time; by
contrast, the transforming and mutable world of ‘relativity’ can be rendered only through a
narrative that changes its perspective. We find in modern narratives flashbacks, time arcs,
jumps, repetitions and, most important in their novelty, leaps and swerves. These are all
narrative devices allowing for the representation of the subjective perception of time and
the instability of space boundaries as these transpire from the theory of relativity.
Unconscious: Freud argued that dreams are the expression of repressed desires and
that the realm of repressed desires is the unconscious. Together with the conscious it
forms the totality of the psychic reality. The unconscious is the part of the psyche unknown
to the subject that, however, and according to Freud, is no less operative in the psyche’s
reality than is consciousness. The unconscious is full of memories and ideas from early
childhood. These are ‘repressed’ and made unconscious for various reasons, among them
because they have been forbidden. The existence of the unconscious is evidenced in
dreams, slips of the tongue, sudden and uncanny realisations of an event, etc.

FURTHER GLOSSARY
MODERN PERIOD: Period which runs from the 16th century onwards.
MODERN: From Latin ‘modo’ (‘just now’): “Of or pertaining to the present and recent
times as opposed to the remote past, e.g. in the 5th century, it referred to the Christian
present as opposed to the Roman past. IN relation to the Victorian past, the modern era is
a means to involve the reader in the period rather than their looking at it from the distance.
FIN DE SIÈCLE: ‘End of the century’. Term applied to the literature and art of the final
years of the 19th century and associated with a mood of decadence, when traditional,
social, moral and artistic values were in transition. The term encompasses not only the
meaning of the English idiom ‘turn of the century’, but also both the closing and onset of
an era, as the end of the 19th century was felt to be a period of degeneration, but at the
same time a period of hope and new beginning. The spirit of the fin de siècle often refers to
the cultural hallmarks that were recognized as prominent in the 1880s and 1890s,
including boredom, cynism, pessimism and a widespread belief that civilization leads to
decadence. The term is often applied to French art and artists, as the traits of the culture
first appeared there, but the movement affected many European countries. This term
becomes applicable to the sentiments and traits associated with the culture as appeared to
be focusing solely on the movement’s initial recognition in France. The ideas and concerns
developed by the fin de siècle artists provided the impetus for movements like symbolism
and modernism. The work of the Decadents and Aesthetes contain hallmarks typical of fin
de siècle art.
EDWARDIAN PERIOD: The reign of Edward VII (1901-1910). By extension it covers the
period from the death of Queen Victoria and the beginning of WWI (1914). English and Irish
literature had a number of prominent writers. Among them are: Rudyard Kipling, Henry
James (who had moved to England from America in 1876), Joseph Conrad, Bernard Shaw,
Arnold Thomas Hardy, Ford Maddox Ford, Katherine Mansfield and W.B. Yeats. Authors
such as Hardy, Conrad, Yeats and James influenced the modernists. Others, such as
Wells, Bennett and Galsworthy are seen as representing stuffiness or moralizing naïveté, in
contrast to the darker, more knowing modernists.
GEORGIAN PERIOD: It usually means the reign of King George V (1910-1936).
Georgian poetry of the early century includes writers like Walter de la Mare and Rupert
Brooke. It was often effusive and delicate with a limpid, rhapsodic quality and enwrapped
in what is still thought of as characteristically poetic diction. The modernist poets,
especially Ezra Pound, reacted against this style, replacing the mellifluous Georgian diction
with a rougher stronger and more varied manner. Five anthologies entitle Georgian Poetry,
were issued between1912 and 1922, edited by Edward Marsh and published by Harold
Monro. It included the poems of Brooke, de la Mare, John Mansfield, Edmund Blunden,
Siegfried Sassoon, D.H. Lawrence and Robert Graves. The last two would not be considered
typically Georgian.
 AVANT-GARDE: ‘Advance guard’, a military term for the shock troops that open the
way for an invasion. This term was apparently used in reference to art and literature in
1845 by Gabriel-Désiré Laverdant, a disciple of the philosopher and social theorist Henri de
Saint-Simon. On literary and artistic terms, the avant-garde aims at shocking the middle
classes. More broadly, it aims at the innovation and revolutionary reassessment of the
techniques and role of art. The avant-garde work sometimes generates unfulfilled
expectations leaving the reader or the viewer frustrated. It may destroy our usual normal
processes of identification and sympathy involved in reading. The disclosure of meaning
may be imminent, hinted at whether in a teasing or abrasive manner, but never occur.
Avant-gardists often imply that the established means of representation are impoverished
and offer new modes of intelligibility and new ways to look listening and read. The avant-
garde intends for art and life to interfere or contaminate each other.
MAKE IT NEW: Ezra Pound’s expression which summarizes the need for change felt in
the period. The modernist age was a reaction against the Victorian period. The modernists
wanted a refresh and to make everything new.
VICTORIAN POSITIVISM: Victorian belief that information derived from logical and
mathematical treaties and reports of sensory experience is the exclusive source of all
authoritative knowledge and that there is a valid truth only in this derived knowledge.
Society, like the physical world operates according to general laws, introspective and
intuitive knowledge is rejected.
THE GREAT EXHIBITION: Event which took place in London in 1851. It displayed
works of engineering, the most amazing technical discoveries, and the wonders of
industrial enterprise and the most innovative works of art, showing that Romanticism has
been overcome. It proclaimed people’s confidence in the greatness and power of Britain.
CRYSTAL PALACE: Building where the Great Exhibition took place.
GLADSTONE: Liberal, humanitarian and dutiful politician. In 1868-74, after the
second Reform Act, he was Prime Minister of the reforming government. He governed again
between 1880 and 1886 and was brought down by the Irish issue.
DISRAELI: Victorian politician. Imperialist, nationalistic and charming. The Queen
seemed to have enjoyed his company. Tory politician. He held power from 1874 to 1889, a
reforming government working largely under the politics established by Gladstone.
LIBERALS: Political party that held power from 1830 to 1886. Between 1868 and 1874,
Gladstone was the Prime Minister. They held power again between 1880 and 1886.
TORIES: Political party. From 1874 to 1889 they held power under Disraeli. From 1880
to º906 the held power again, known as UNIONISTS.
MARXISM: the political, economic, and social theories of Karl Marx including the belief
that the struggle between social classes is a major force in history and that there should
eventually be a society in which there are no classes.
POLICIES OF LIBERAL THINKING: Liberal policies that appeared during the second
half of the 19th century. They were promoted by the ‘old Whigs’, free traders and
industrialists and by social reformers. These policies included concern with issues such as
utilitarism, the notions of liberty and individualism and proposals for social reform.
UTILITARISM: Notion put forward by Jeremy Bentham who advocated that morals and
legislation should aim at achieving the greatest good for the greatest number.
OLD WHIGS: Name of the liberals. They were the aristocracy, landlords and members
of the House of Lords.
On Liberty: Work by John Steward Mill expressing the notions of liberty and
individualism.
EDWIN CHADWICK: English social reformer. He defended a social reform that entailed
economic policies of retrenchment, i.e. minimal state expense and with efficiency in
government finances.
FREE-TRADE, ANTI-PROTECTION OR LAISSEZ FAIRE POLICIES: Laissez faire ‘let
them do’. Transactions between private parties are free from government restrictions, tariffs
and subsidies, with only enough regulations to protect property rights. They followed Adam
Smith’s theories.
 Wealth of Nations: Study by Adam Smith promoting his theories which support
laissez faire policies. Consumption is the sole end and purpose of production. The interest
of the producer ought to be attended to only so far as they may be necessary for promoting
that of the consumer.
URBAN ECONOMY: Economy based on trade and manufacturing.
PEOPLE’S CHARTER: Document written in 1838 by William Lovett of the London
Working Men’s Association stating the ideological bases of the Chartist movement. IT
detailed the six key points that the chartists believed were necessary to reform the electoral
system and alleviate the suffering of the working classes:
 UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE: The Charter proposed that the vote be extended to all adult
males over2 1.
 NO PROPERTY QUALIFICATION: candidates for elections would not have to be
selected from the upper classes any longer.
 ANNUAL PARLIAMENTS: A government could retain power as long as there was a
majority of support. This made it very difficult to replace a bad or unpopular government.
 EQUAL REPRESENTATION: the Chartists proposed the division of the UK into 300
electoral districts, each containing an equal number of inhabitants, with no more than one
representative from each district to sit in Parliament.
 PAYMENT OF MEMBERS: The charter proposed that the MPs were paid an annual
salary of ₤500.
 VOTE BY SECRET BALLOT: Voting at the time was made public. IT was not made
secret until 1871.
The Charter was lunched in Glasgow in May 1838 and gained support across the
country very quickly. Chartists campaigned for the six points for many years and produced
several petitions to the Parliament.
ACTS FOR THE REPRESENATION OF THE PEOPLE: Debated at the turn of the
century. Acts regulating people’s right to vote. In 1918 the right to vote to men over 21 and
limited female suffrage to some women were given. Universal suffrage for both sexes was
given in 1928.
THE 1872 BALLOT ACT: Voting was made secret.
DICKENS, TENNYSON, TROLLOPE: writers widely read and discussed at the time
HIGH AND LOW ART: The advent of an unsophisticated reading public led to the
division of literature into high and low art. Low art meets the demands of much of the new
unsophisticated readership.
IRISH QUESTION: Debate on whether or not the Irish should be allowed to rule
themselves. Discussion on whether Ireland was an ‘internal colonized zone’ bean to
emphasize its economic inequality and its cultural differences with England.
LITERARY REVIVAL: Cultural renaissance which took place in Ireland around the
turn of the century, led by a group of Anglo Irish writers, e.g. W.B. Yeats, Lady Augusta
Gregory and J.M Synge. Their writings were based on the awareness of Irish Nationalism,
myth and legend. It was responsible for the production of an exceptionally strong body of
work which not only stimulated Irish nationalism, but also gave Ireland a place on the
international stage.
PAN-CELTIC SOCIETY, IRSIH NATIONAL LITERARY OSCIETY: Groups set up to
develop their cultural renaissance involving W.B. Yeats, Douglass Hyde and Maude Gone.
PAN-CELITC SOCIETY: Organization promoting Celtic culture.
IRISH NATIONAL LITERAY SOCIETY: It aimed at honouring Irish culture
IRISH LITERARY THEATER: Founded in 1898 in order to use theatre to spread the
ideals of the literary revival by Yeats, Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn.
ABBEY THEATRE: Set up in Dublin in 1904 for the representation of the Irish Literary
Theatre productions.
On Baile’s strand: Play by W.B. Yeats, performed at the Abbey Theatre.
Spreading the News: Play by Lady Gregory and performed at the Abbey Theatre.
Riders to the Sea: Play by J.M. Synge, and performed at the Abbey Theatre.
 GAELIC LEAGE: It was formed in 1893 to revive the Irish language and culture. The
philosophy of the Gaelic League and the cultural activities of the Irish Literary Revival had
an influence on political groups.
IRB: Irish Republican Brotherhood. Secret oath-bound fraternal organization dedicated
to the establishment of an independent democratic republic in Ireland between 1859 and
1924.
SINN FÉIN: ‘Ourselves alone’. The most important political movement to emerge from
the cultural renaissance.
ARTHUR GRIFFITH: He founded Sinn Féinn in 1905. He believed that the 1800 Act of
Union was illegal and was in favour of the withdrawal of the Irish MPs from Westminster to
form an independent assembly in Dublin. He proposed a system of dual monarchy, similar
to the one given to Hungary.
THE UNITED IRISHMAN: Nationalist paper founded by Arthur Griffith, the founder of
Sinn Féinn.
JAMES CONNOLLY (1868-1916): Founder of the Irish Socialist Republican Society
(1899) and later on a newspaper: “The Worker’s Republic”. Afterwards he founded the
Socialist labour Party (1902). He set up the Irish Citizen Army to protect the strikers in
Dublin in November 1913.
W.B.YATS, GEROGE BERNHARD SHAW: Irish writers who supported the strikers in
the º93 strike in Dublin.
PATRICK PEARSE, THOMAS MCDONAGH: Militant nationalists who supported the
strikers in the 1913 strike in Dublin.
THE IRISH PARLIAMENTARY PARTY: Also called the Irish Party (Home Rule Party)
formed in 1882 by Charles Steward Parnell.
JOHN REDMON: He revitalized the Irish party in 1900
HOME RULE: Constitutional movement towards a national All-Ireland Parliament
HOME RULE BILL: Bill which would allow for an Irish Parliament.
ULSTER VOLUNTEER FORCE: Voluntary army founded by the Ulster Unionists in
September 1913.
ULSTER UNIONISTS: They defended political union between Ireland and Great Britain.
THE ORANGE ORDER: Protestant fraternal order formed in Co Armagh in 1795 during
a period of Protestant-Catholic sectarian conflict. They fought to keep the Union and
Ireland as part of the UK.
EOIN MACNEILL: One of the founders of the Gaelic League, who proposed setting up a
civil defense force, the Irish Volunteers.
THE IRISH VOLUNTEERS: Voluntary army established in Southern Ireland, similar to
the Ulster Volunteer force, in 1914. The Volunteers intended to safeguard the rights of the
Irish people, threatened by Unionist actions. It appealed to a large cross-section of the Irish
people, including men involved in groups such as the Gaelic League.
ROGER CASEMENT AND ERSKINE CHILDERS: They belonged to a group of Anglo-
Irish nationalists who on July 26th 1914 imported guns and ammunition in the Howth
Gun-Running.
HOWTH AND GUN-RUNNING: July 26th 1914. IT intended to redress the balance by
providing arms to the Irish Volunteers, as a response to the Larne Gun-Running in arming
the ulster volunteers. The aims consignment was not large but the event was responsible
for the further spread of Irish militant nationalism and there was a corresponding increase
in the number of recruits joining the Volunteers.
NATIONAL VOLUNTEERS: Group of Volunteers who joined the British Army in 1914.
They hoped that the war would be over within a few months and Home Rule would be
granted on the following year. The rest of the Volunteers, including the extremists, retained
the name of Irish Volunteers.
PATRICK PEARSE: The most outspoken and charismatic member of the Irish
Volunteers’ military council. Appointed President of the Provisional Army and Commander-
in-chief of the army (Easter Raising) and proclaimed the Irish Republic from the steps of
the GPO (General Post Office) in Dublin. He surrendered on Saturday 29 April 1916.
 EDWARD CARSON AND BONAR LAW: two of the staunchest opponents of Home Rule,
members of the British War Cabinet
CONSCRIPTION: Compulsory enrollment of people especial for military service. In 1916
there was a threat of conscription being extended to Ireland.
PATRICK PEARSE, EAMON CEANN, JOSPEH PLUNKET5T, THOMAS CLARKE AND
SEAN MCDIARMADA: Five members of the IRB’s military council set up in in May 1915
EASTER RISING: Rebellion in 1916 organized by the IRB military council, which took
place on Easter Sunday.
MANSION HOUSE: In Dublin. Place where Sinn Féinn established an independent
which the British Government refused to recognize.
WAR OF INDEPENDNCE: From 1919 to 1921. Fought between the Irish Republican
Army (the army of the Irish Republic) and the British Government and its forces in Ireland.
RIC: Royal Irish Constabulary. Ireland’s armed police force from the early 19th century
until 1922. Two members were killed by the Irish Volunteers in Soloheadbeg, Co Tipperary,
the first expression of physical force from a group of Volunteers who wanted to act
independently of Sinn Féinn.
IRISH REPUBLICAN ARMY (IRA): The Volunteers’ new name from August 1919.
BLOODY SUNDAY: Event which took place on November 21st 1920. Eleven British
intelligence officers were shot in Dublin by Michael Collins’ gunmen. Crown forces shot into
the crowd at a GAA match in Croke Park, killing 12 people and wounding sixty.
GAA: Gaelic Athletic Association
CROKE PARK: The GAA venue
LLOYD GEORGE: British Prime Minister between 1916 and 1922. He realized he had to
seek a truce with Sinn Féinn.
ANGLO-IRISH TREATY: December 6th 1921. Ireland had Domain status. The 26
counties were to be called the Irish Free State. Ulster was partitioned.
TREATY PORTS: Three Irish ports were kept by the British for defence purposes:
Berehaven, Queenstown (Cobh) and Lough Swilly.
MICHAEL COLLINS (1890-1922): Irish politician and revolutionary. He set up a
provisional government to oversee the handing over of Ireland to the Irish. The formal
transfer took place on January 16th 1922.
BLACK AND TANS: Former soldiers brought into Ireland by the government in London
after 1918 to assist the RIC (Royal Irish Constabulary).
ANTY TREATY IRREGULARS OR REPUBLICANS: Group within the IRA against the
Treaty.
PRO-TREATY ARMY OR REGULARS: Group within the IRA who were in favour of the
Anglo-Irish Treaty. The split between those in favour of those against the Treaty led to the
civil war (1922-1923).
IRISH FREE STATE: Name of Ireland after the Treaty. It would have the status of
domain. It became a reality on November 6th 1923.
CUMANN NA NGAEDHAL: New party developed after the Irish Civil War. Pro-treaty.
FIANNA FÁIL: New party developed after the Irish Civil war. Anti-treaty.
DOMINION: Autonomous territory under British sovereignty, within the
Commonwealth.
PROTECTORATE: A territory (country) defended and controlled by a more powerful
country. Autonomous territory protected diplomatically or militarily against third parties by
a stronger state or entity. The protectorate usually accepts specified obligations, depending
on the nature of their relationship, but it retains formal sovereignty and remains a state
under international laws.
COLONIALISM: The control or governing influence of a nation over a dependent
country, territory or people. The system or policy by which a nation maintains or advocates
such control or influence.
URBAN ECONOMY: Economy based on trade and on manufacturing.
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: A consequence of the technological innovations in the
production of textiles, iron and coal in the 1th and 19th centuries, a previous agricultural
revolution in Britain, capable of feeding a larger population, creating a greater demand for
manufactured goods and innovation in transport which helped to spread economic
development to more remote regions. The need for raw materials leading to colonial
expansion is one of its consequences. It refers to the transition of an agrarian economy to a
machine-based and manufacturing economy.
PHILISTINE: A person who enjoys only popular entertainment but does not appreciate
art, literature or music of high quality.
ART FOR ART’S SAKE DOCTRINE: Doctrine which defends pursuing fleeting beauty
and pleasure as ends for themselves. This doctrine is followed by the aestheticism,
represented by Oscar Wilde.
DANDY: Man who focuses on physical appearance, refined language and leisurely
hobbies. Charles Baudelaire defined the dandy as one who elevates aesthetics to a living
religion. For him, dandyism is not even an excessive delight in clothes and material
elegance. For the perfect dandy, these things are not more than the symbol of the
aristocratic superiority of his mind. The linkage of clothing with political protest became a
particularly English characteristic during the 18th century. It can be seen as a political
protestation against the rise of levelling egalitarian principles, often including nostalgic
adherence to feudal or pre-industrial values such as the ideals of the perfect gentleman or
the autonomous aristocrat, though paradoxically the dandy required an audience. Oscar
Wilde and Lord Byron exemplify the dandy’s roles in the public sphere, both as writers and
as personae providing sources of gossip and scandal.
AESTHETIC MOVEMENT: Movement born in France and inspired by Kant’s vies in
relation to the aesthetics and the pleasure obtained from viewing a work of art. Art was an
end in itself almost to the point of pseudo-religious belief. Art is useless and therefore it
should be contemplated for its value in terms of pleasure only. The Aesthete’s production
follows the Art for Art’s Sake motto. For many, the Aesthetes descended into an excess of
hedonism. From the 1880s to the start of the First World War, the Aesthetic movement
liberated art from pragmatism. For this movement, art and nature are separate and
opposing forces.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE AND THÉOPHILE GAUTIER: Advocates of the Aesthetic
movement.
Critique of Aesthetic Judgement: Kat’s work which argues that a pure aesthetic
experience is the contemplation of an object that provokes pleasure for its own sake, for no
other materialistic or utilitarian purposes.
WALTER PATER: Writer who introduced the views of French aesthetics into Victorian
England.
Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873): Book written by Walter Pater. In
its conclusion, he exposed the need for crowning one’s life with the most delicate and
exquisite sensations in order to appreciate the supreme value of beauty and the pleasure
obtained from the ‘love or art for its own sake’.
AC SWINBOURNE (POET), OSCAR WILDE, ARTHUR SIMMONS, LIONEL JOHNSON
(WRITERS): Authors who expressed the moral and artistic views of Aestheticism.
DECADENT MOVEMENT: Movement intrinsically linked to the Aesthetic movement.
The decadents followed a way of life based on the ideals of the Aesthetic movement: art is
totally opposed to nature, understood both in the biological sense of the word and in the
‘natural’ forms of morality and sexual behavior. The art of the decadents was artificial. The
decadence (a positive adjective to the members of the group) was expressed in the search
for strange unnatural sensations. In many cases, it involved the use of drugs and
experimental sexual behaviourism.
The Picture of Dorian Gray (Novel, Oscar Wilde), Salomé (play, Oscar Wilde):
Representative works of Decadent Literature.
‘BEAT’ POETS: US poets concentrated in California in the 1950s, noted chiefly by
their rejection of poetic as well as social conventions, exemplified through experimental,
often informal phrasing and diction and formless verse that attempts to capture
spontaneity of thought and feeling. The sophistication and artificiality of the Decadents will
reappear with them, with multiple variations.
 T.S. ELLIOT, T.E. HULME, W.B YEATS, VIRGINIA WOOLF AND THE BLOOMSBURY
GROUP: Writers of the interwar period.
THE BLOOMSBURY GROUP: An influential group of early 20th century writers of the
area of London. Important members included Clive Bell, Vanessa Bell, E.M Forster, Roger
Fry, John Maynard Keynes, Lytton Strachey Leonard Woolf and Virginia Woolf.
The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (published by 1859): Book by
Charles Darwin. It questioned that species were immutable and argued that animals
transformed themselves gradually.
H.M.S. BEAGLE: Ship on which Darwin, as a naturalist, went on a scientific expedition
to survey the South American Seas (1931-36). He visited places such as Tenerife, Brazil,
Buenos Aires, Chile, The Galapagos Islands, Tahiti and New Zealand.
THE PRINCIPLE OF EVOLUTION OF NATUAL SELECTION: The touchstone of
Darwin’s evolution theory
LAMARCK, GOETHE, ERASMUS DAWIN (Darwin’s grandfather): Their scientific
observations pointed out the possibility that the morphology of animals and plants was the
result of past changes in the environments in which they had developed leading to
mutations or spontaneous transformations.
THOMAS MALTHUS: Political economist who influenced Darwin’s theory.
Essay on the Principle of Population (1798): Malthus observed that in nature plants
and animals produce a greater number of offspring than can survive. He extrapolated this
observation to the growth of population taking place in England at the time and observed
that human species cold overproduce if left unchecked. He concluded that unless family
size was regulated famine would become a global epidemic and eventually destroy species.
Poverty and famine were natural outcomes of population growth. He used God as the
explanation for these natural outcomes.
ALFRED RUSSELL WALLACE (1823-1913): He arrived at the same conclusions as
Darwin about natural selection after reading Malthus.
NATURAL SELECTION: Mechanism by which nature chooses the best individuals of
each generation. They transmit their favourable characteristics to their descendants,
according to the laws governing inheritance.
THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST: Expression that Darwin borrowed from the
philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820-1903). The individuals perpetuating the species are
those more able to adapt to the environment, since adaptation to the environment is the
most important factor for the survival of the species.
THE DESCENT OF MAN AND SELECTION IN RELATION TO SEX (1870): Book in
which Darwin addressed the issue of his theory of an ancestor to the human species.
BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE: Founded in 1831
in order to promote science. In 1860 the results of Darwin’s investigations were discussed
there.
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY (1825-1895): Nicknamed ‘Darwin’s Bulldog’ for his
passionate arguments in favour of Darwin’s point of view.
RICHARD OWEN (1804-1892): British zoologist. He was against Darwin’s theories.
SAMUEL WILBERFORCE (1805-1873): English bishop in the Church of England. He
was against Darwin’s theories.
DARWINISM: A theory of the origin and the perpetuation of new species of animals and
plants. It defends that offspring of a given organism vary that natural selection favours the
survival of some of these variations over others; that new species have arisen and may
continue to arise by these processes and that widely divergent groups of plants and
animals have arisen from the same ancestors.
EUGENICS: Propounded by Francis Galton (1822-1911), Darwin’s cousin. It defends
the need for selective breeding in the delineation of racial qualities. A nation should ensure
that its able members had dominance in fertility if it wanted to survive. Failure to do so
would mean the disappearance of the nation.
DEGENERATION: Term used by Huxley. It became a key term in relation to the social
changes taking place at the time. It stood out as the byword for modern Western
civilization. It was taken as the break from traditional expression and was present in the
new tendencies in the arts.
EVOLUTION: Term which the establishment would use to justify empire and
colonialism. Apes were considered to be under-evolved relations of humans. Thus, non-
European societies were seen as underdeveloped civilizations. It was the duty of the
civilized, progressive, white male European to educate, civilize and improve primitive
societies such as Africa and India.
Degeneration: Work by Max Nordau, who uses Darwin’s theories to establish that the
end of civilization could be foretold by observing licentious contemporary works of art, e.g.
Naturalism and the Decadents (Oscar Wilde). The New Woman and the suffrage movement
were seen as precipitants of this apocalyptic future.
NATURALISM: 19TH century literary movement which supports the belief that life was
subject to the objective and inexorable forces of nature.
EDWIN RAY LANKESTER (1847-1929): Author of Degeneration: A Chapter on
Darwinism. In this book, he speculated on the decline of the white race that would become
socially parasitical.
The time Machine (1895): Written by H.G. Wells. It envisions the end both of
humanity and the world.
DEGENERACY: Term referring to the phenomenon that the social status quo was
under threat from the freer values of the younger generation skeptical about the traditional
values of morality, customs and properties, particularly in relation to sex. It meant a
liberating and scientifically based escape from these values.
Dracula: Novel by Bram Stoker written in 1897 which can be read partly as a caution
against the rise of promiscuity and its associated evils (prostitution, syphilis and adultery).
It pointed accusatively to many of the pillars of Victorian society, so deeply engrained in
Victorian hypocrisy, especially with regard to sex.
The Picture of Dorian Gray: Novel by Oscar Wilde, written in 1891 which can be read
partly as a caution against the rise of promiscuity and its associated evils (prostitution,
syphilis and adultery). It pointed accusatively to many of the pillars of Victorian society, so
deeply engrained in Victorian hypocrisy, especially with regard to sex.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: Novel by Robert Louis Stevenson published in 1886, which
can be read partly as a caution against the rise of promiscuity and its associated evils
(prostitution, syphilis and adultery). It pointed accusatively to many of the pillars of
Victorian society, so deeply engrained in Victorian hypocrisy, especially with regard to sex.
ATAVISM: The reappearance in an individual of characteristics of some remote
ancestors that have been absent in intervening generations.
AGNOSTIC: Term coined in the 1870s, meaning the impossibility for the empirical
mind to either believe or not to believe.
Fantasia of the Unconscious: Work by D.H. Lawrence /1885-1930): He affirmed that
there is only one clue to universe: the individual soul within the individual being, i.e. the
world was as varied as the individuals observing it.
REALISM: Style of writing popularized in the 19th century that focuses on depicting live
accurately and without any hint of fantasy. It includes writers such as George Elliot. It
presupposes a vision of the world shared by all members of society.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE (1844-1900): The first philosopher to consider extensively
human responsibility and freedom in a universe without God.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for Everyone and No One (1833-85): Work in
which Nietzsche stated that ‘God is dead’.
The Birth of Tragedy (1872): Nietzsche’s first publication in which he divided
experience between Apollonian (rational) and Dyonisian (aesthetic) forces. His era was
dominated by a rational Apollonian mentality to the detriment of the creative aesthetic of
the dream and chaos of the Dyonisian spirit, resulting in a total loss of connection with the
tragic myth and sensual intuitive truth found in Greek tragedy.
Essay on Self-Criticism: Preface to the 1886 edition of The Birth of Tragedy, where
Nietzsche places upon art, not morality, the responsibility for interpreting the significance
of existence.
 MYTH: It stood out as the ordering power lost by the culture and society.
ELLIOT, JOYCE, WOOLF, YEATS: Writers who would incorporate into their literature
myth and classical models to give meaning to the alienated modern individual for whom
Christian religion has ceased to be the answer.
À la Recherche du Temps Perdu (1913-27): Work by Marcel Proust. It greatly
influenced authors of the period, particularly modernist authors.
The Golden Bough (1890-1915): Work by Frazer. It influenced authors of the period,
particularly modernist authors.
THE PHYLOSOPHY OF WILL ACCORDING TO ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER (1788-
1860): his philosophy of the will, in line with Plato and Immanuel Kant, propounded that
the world was he physical manifestation of the underlying cosmic reality. He had a
pessimistic view of the universe: the will by its own nature can be never satisfied leading to
all forms of suffering.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF WILL ACCORDING TO NIETZSCHE: He was influenced by
Schopenhauer. He inverts his pessimistic view into an optimistic celebration of the positive
forces of the will. The modern society is sick as it failed to acknowledge to this positive
forces, but instead was led by frivolity and morbidity. Writers like Yeats agree with him that
the will was a physiological complex of drive and impulses.
The Will of Power (1901): In this work, Nietzsche identified universal will with the
relation of a power between forces which constitutes the driving energy of human life. He
emphasizes the field of forces, not power per se. Life should be led as an endavour to
satisfy the will of power. This philosophy seems to justify dictatorship, ascetism and
punishment or sadism. It has been used to justify he fascist regime in Germany.
THEORY OF THE SUPERMAN (ÜBERMENSCH): The übermensch refers to a new,
creative being that would transcend religion, morality and ordinary society.
BE WHAT YOU ARE: Motto of the Theory of the Superman.
NIHILISM: Belief that traditional values, morals, etc. have no value. This term was
coined by Ivan Turgenev in Fathers and Sons (1862). According to Nietzsche, it is an
ambiguous term. It can refer to:
 ACTIVE NIHILISM: ‘Increased power of the spirit, marked by violent destruction.
 PASSIVE NIHILISM: The power of the spirit would be recessive and in decline
implying futility, resignation and cynic.
Both meanings can be observed in the different approaches to Modernism.
VIRGINIA WOOLF’S MRS DALLOWAY (1925), JAMES JOYCE’S ULLYSES (1922):
Works that contain circular structure that breaks the linear progression of the narrative.
ETERNAL RECURRENCE: Nietzsche’s concept according to which experience is
eternally repeated. The individual should live each moment as if it would be repeated
eternally. Linear time is questioned and undermined. This concept brings two dimensions
of item. Cyclical and eternal time. It partly clarifies Nietzsche’s theory of übermensch in
that what is at stake is becoming what one is and experiencing life as if one wanted each
moment to come back again. Repetition is significant in modern literature.
CYCLICAL TIME: In eternal recurrence, this concept is present in the idea of repetition
or recurrence.
ETERNAL TIME: It implies that repetition will happen for ever.
REPETITION: It obeys to a need to render lineal, chronological time as insufficient in
explaining human reality and the universe.
RELATIVITY: Concept linked to Albert Einstein’s (1879-1955). Time may be perceived
differently by different people.
THEORY OF RELATIVITY: In the case of objects, travelling at speed near to that of
light, matter transforms into energy.
ALBERT EINSTEIN (1879-1955): Scientist who propounded the theory of relativity,
which greatly influenced experience of time. These theories (1905 and 1916) refute
Newtonian physics of permanence by pointing out the possibility of change in matter.
NEWTONIAN UNIVERSE: It finds expression in the realistic novel, where a reliable
narrator can render observations of a world that responds to consistent empirical laws and
which progresses according to a chronological pattern of linear time.
 FLASCHBACKS, TIME ARCS JUMPS, REPETITIONS, LEAPS, SWERVES: Narrative
devices allowing for the representation of the subjective perception of time and the
instability of space boundaries as these transpire from the theory of relativity.
MOMENT OF BEING: For Woolf, the infinite instance of time in which matter is
transformed into energy, i.e. the moment in which the individual reaches the sublime point
of recognition.
EPIPHANY: For Joyce, the infinite instance of time in which matter is transformed into
energy, i.e. the moment in which the individual reaches the sublime point of recognition.
‘IMAGE’: Defined by Pound as an intellectual and emotional complex. The most readily
available tool to transmit the moment of being or epiphany.
LANGUAGE: It became the most important feature in literature rather than the story. It
is felt to be ambiguous and flexible. Modern writing constantly plays with the suspicion
that language can never be fixed and meaning is always referred. It stops being a
transparent, reliable tool and becomes an issue. It is mutable, ambiguous and unfixed in
meaning. The suspicion that language cannot be trusted in the search for truth and
knowledge led many writers to incorporate language itself into their writings, to explore
language and to analyse its implication in the subjectivity of the individual.
FERDINAND DE SAUSSURE: The first linguist to question the goal of the study of
linguistics. He moved from the study of the genealogy of the changes in word and grammar
over time to the exploration of language as a social phenomenon. He propounded the
principle that there are no positive symbols in language. Language is not a tool to portray
reality as it could be physically observed. It is made up of signs which owe their
signification not to the world, but to the difference to each other in a network of signs that
is the signifying system. The meaning of a sign is not fixed. It depends on its oppositions
within a particular system. Language is not divinely designed or naturally given. Saussure
focuses not in the development of language over time but on finding the rules and the
structure of language governing speech and writing.
LANGUE: According to Saussure, language as a particular structural system.
PAROLE: According to Saussure, a specific utterance or speech act.
STRUCTURALISM: From the linguistic viewpoint, approach to language study in which
a language is analyzed an independent network of formal systems, each of which is
composed of elements that are defined in terms of their contrasts with other elements in
the system.
POST-STRUCTURALISM: A variation of structuralism. It emphasizes plurality of
meaning and inestabity of concepts that structuralists use to define society, language, etc.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN (1889-1951): Philosopher of language. He thought that
human reasoning was not so much an engagement with reality and truth as a language
game. He wrote Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922). He shared his dissatisfaction with
the imperfection of language with the imperfection of languages with Bertrand Russell
(1872-1970) and the Vienna Circle. According to him, language has limitations marked the
logical rules governing the combination of signs. There is a distinction between what can be
said with coherence and what cannot. Human knowledge and experience are constrained
by language. For him language is not a mere system of representation of the world and our
knowledge of it, but a social and communicative reality. His work influenced the logical
positivism and philosophy of science of the Vienna Circle. His work influenced Bertrand
Russell and G.E. Moore.
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922): Work by Wittgenstein set to provide a
solution to all the philosophical problems, trying to establish a clear demarcation between
logic and empirical knowledge and to discern between logical and empirical truths. He tried
to formulate a global conceptualization about the relationship between language and
thought and language and reality. The fact that language disguises and misrepresents
thought and reality implies that a search within language for a logic that goes beyond the
superficial logic of its external structure is of paramount importance. This hidden structure
is constituted by elements that have a direct connection with reality.
BERTRAND RUSSEL (1872-1970): Philosopher. Like Wittgenstein, he was not
interested in a linguistic approach to language as a philosophical one. He a dissatisfaction
with the imperfection of language shared with him and with the members of the Vienna
Circle.
THE VIENNA CIRCLE: Group of philosophers, scientists and mathematicians formed
in the 1920s who met in Vienna to investigate scientific language and scientific
methodology. They are associated with the movement called LOGICAL POSITIVISM. They
were dissatisfied with the imperfection of language.
LOGICAL POSITIVSM: philosophical movement that rejects all transcendental
metaphysics, statements of fact being held to be meaningful only if they have verifiable
consequences in experience and in statements of logic, mathematics, or philosophy, with
such statements of fact deriving their validity from the rules of language. Also called
LOGICAL EMPIRICISM.
G.E. MOORE (1873-1958): His insights into the aesthetic constituted the basis for the
formulation of the aesthetics of the Bloomsbury group.
MARTIN HEIDEGGER (1889-1976): He was mainly concerned with ontology (the study
of being). He emphasized language as the vehicle through which the question of being
could be explored. He was interested in poetry. He has influenced existentialism (Sartre,
Ortega y Gassett) and post-structuralism (Derrida) among other currents. He has a great
impact in literature from the second half of the 20th century to the present day.
Being and Time (1927): Work by Heidegger. He stated that individuals do not speak
through language. Language speaks through them.
SUBJECTIVITY: The subject is not seen as a unitary normative self any longer. It is
seen as a fluid, discontinuous and fragmented self.
SIGMUND FREUD (1856-1939): His psychological studies led to the foundation of
psychoanalysis and confirmed the view of the self as evolving and fragmented. His work is
part of the general inquiry into the workings of the mind found in the studies of Carl Young
81875-1961), Henry Bergson (1859-1941) and Williams James (1842-1910).
WILLIAM JAMES (1842-1910): Brother of the novelist Henry James. He coined the
term ‘stream of consciousness’.
STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS: Narrative technique in nondramatic fiction intended to
render the flow of myriad impressions—visual, auditory, physical, associative, and
subliminal—that impinge on the consciousness of an individual and form part of his
awareness along with the trend of his rational thoughts. The term was first used by the
psychologist William James in The Principles of Psychology (1890).
HENRI BERGSON (1859-1941): French philosopher. He discusses the mind’s
particular understanding of time.
Time and Freewill (1889): Work by the French philosopher Henri Bergson, who
discusses the mind’s particular understanding of time. He opposes linear time against
‘duration’.
DURATION: The way the mind perceives the length of an experience according to the
respective subjective factors of appreciation of that experience in each individual. It refers
to those times in the life of an individual that are significant for the individual. These times
are not necessarily chronologically ordered and they are different for each individual.
CHRONOLOGICAL TIME (LINEAR TIME): The time of history and the time that
marks our bodies in so far as we are living organisms.
TIME OF THE MIND: It is detached from chronological time. It implies that past and
future co-exist in the present.
The Waste Land (1922): Work by T.S. Elliot. He argues that past and future co-exist
in the present.
Time and Western Man (1927): Work by Wyndham Lewis, influenced by Bergson and
by Nietzsche. It postulated the idea that continuity in time was impossible. Time is seen as
fragmented and people inhabiting time only in memory and projection.
OPEN-ENDED FINALE: New technique used in the novel particular due to the new
perspectives on time. Another technique would be an abrupt beginning at any ordinary
moment in the life of a character, e.g. Joyce’s Ulysses.
 REALITY: According to Bergson, facts and matter should be scrutinized by intuition in
order to achieve a complete vision of reality. These facts and matter are only the outer
expression of reality, which is shaped according to a mind’s perception of time.
JOSPEH BREUER (1842-1905): Psychologist with whom Freud cooperated on cases of
hysteria.
HYPNOSIS: Method used to treat hysteria allowing patients to disclose their memories.
It was initially used by Freud and Breuer, based on Jean Charcot’s studies.
FREE ASSOCIATION: Method introduced into Freud and Breuer’s work for recovering
memories.
PSYCHOANALYSIS: Term coined in 1896 for the method used by Freud to release the
repressed emotions to cure people.
THE INTERNATIONAL PSYCHOANALYTICAL ASSOCIATION: Founded by Freud and
Carl Jung in 1910.
The Interpretation of Dreams (1900): Work by Freud in which he argued that dreams
are the expression of repressed desires and that the realm of repressed desires is the
unconscious.
UNCONSCIOUS: Part of the psyche unknown to the subject. However, it is not less
operative in the psyche’s reality than consciousness. It is full of memories and ideas from
early childhood, which are made unconscious for many reasons, e.g. they have been
forbidden. Its existence is evidenced in dreams, slips of the tongue, sudden an uncanny
realisations of an event, etc. Its existence implies that there is a part of the mind that can
never be totally known by the subject. The idea that the individual is totally in control of
their actions cannot be sustained, as there is a part of the mind that, because it is not
conscious, cannot be controlled by the subject.
PSYCHOLOGICAL REALISM: Term coined by Henry James. Freud’s theories
influenced literature. There is a new interest in what Henry James called psychological
realism, i.e. to explore the hidden drives and desires of the characters.
PUNCH: Magazine which greatly contributed to the feminist imagery, e.g. powerful and
athletic women cycling, bullying effeminate men at dinner parties, etc. in contrast to the
prevailing image of the Victorian middle-class woman as a fragile figure in need of male
protection and uninvolved with public life.
THE WOMAN QUESTION: Phrase used in connection with a social change which
questioned the roles of women and issues of women’s suffrage, reproductive rights, bodily
autonomy, property rights, legal rights, medical rights marriage and sexual rights.
HENRY MAINE, JOHN MCLENNAN, HERBERT SPENCER, LEWS HERNY MORGAN,
JOHN LUBBOCK AND J.J BACHOFEN: Social science and anthropological discourses
emerging from Darwinism which defended that patriarchy and its organization of social
structures and gender roles were historically and evolutionarily justified by means of re-
examining the idea of timeless role of women in society.
JANE ELLEN HARRISON (1850-1928): Famous British Classicist and social
anthropologist who wrote influential works on the shift from matriarchy to patriarchy in
Asia Minor and Greece, and contributed to the matriarchal discourse initiated aby
Bachofen in the 1860s. She places emphasis on the shift from matriarchy to patriarchy.
Prolegomena to the Study of Greek religions (1903): Work by Jane Ellen Harrison.
She argues for the existence of a matriarchal origin in Greek religions and claims that the
ancient cult to the female figure has been forgotten and replaced by the obsession with the
patriarchal figurer. Patriarchy sought to destroy matrilineal families in order to introduce
patriarchal laws of marriage and narrowing concepts of femininity. Since patriarchal
mythology was the tool used to impose patriarchal structures, research into matriarchal
myths would help subvert patriarchy. She adds alternative modes of femininity and
masculinity and alternative concepts of gendered subjectivity.
THE GREAT MOTHER: Goddess worshipped in before patriarchy. Harrison was sure
that she would return triumphant. In the 1920s and 1930s artists such as Virginia Woolf,
D.H. Lawrence, André Breton and the Surrealists explored the figure of the Great Mother.
Ancient Art and Ritual: Work in which Harrison suggests that art develops from
ritual.
 Epilegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1921): In the preface of this work she
presents Freud as a background authority and acknowledges a debt to his work.
Totem and Taboo (1913): Freud’s work which shows interest in Harrison’s studies on
the myth of the Great mother and in the theories she developed on totemistic ceremonies
and groups, which are explored in the book.
The Evolution of Sex (1889): written by Patrick Geddes and Arthur Thomson. It
concluded that the female human was a case of arrested development, following Darwin
and Spencer.
Patrick Geddes (1854-1932): Biologist. He gendered his study of the cell’s metabolic
process and argued that the position of women in society was not the result of acquired
social behavior, but that it reflected the economy of cell metabolism and its parallel psychic
differentiation between the sexes. He used science to invalidate women’s struggle for
emancipation.
Some psychological Consequences of the Anatomical Distinction between the
Sexes (1925): Freud distinguished between the respective psychological developments in
boys and girls.
PENIS ENVY: The supposed coveting of the penis by a woman which, according to
Freud, leads to feelings of inferiority and defensive or compensatory behavior. Freud linked
this concept to female sexuality. Penis envy leads woman to a ‘masculine’ complex’
connected to female homosexuality by Freud.
CASTRATION COMPLEX: A child’s fear or delusion of genital injury at the hands of the
parent of the same sex as punishment for unconscious guilt over oedipal striving. The often
unconscious fear or feeling of bodily injury or loss of power at the hands of authority. The
dénouement of the ‘castration complex’ for women leads to the acknowledgement of “the
fact of her castration, and with it, too the superiority of the male and her own inferiority”.
ANATOMY IS DESTINY: Phrase which, according to Freud, means that the feminist
struggle is pointless.
SUPEREGO: The ethical component of the personality and provides the moral
standards by which the ego operates. The superego’s prohibitions, criticisms, and
inhibitions from a person’s conscience and its positive aspirations and ideals represent
one’s idealized self-image. According to Freud, the superego of men predisposes them to
undertake the most challenging tasks. Women, because of their less strongly formed
superego, are capricious and unreliable “social beings.”
Female Sexuality (1931): Work by Freud. He expanded the ideas expressed in the
previous paper, i.e. Some Psychological Consequences of the Anatomical Distinction
between the Sexes (1925)
OEDIPUS COMPLEX: A desire for sexual involvement with the parent of the opposite
sex and a concomitant sense of rivalry with the parent of the same sex, a crucial stage in
the normal developmental process. In this theory, Freud perpetuated stereotypes OF
masculinity and femininity.
KAREN HORNEY, HELENE DEUTSCH: Freud’s feminist colleagues. They do not deny
the value of psychoanalytical theory, but they challenged Freud’s characterization of
femininity.
KAREN HORNEY: In 1925, she opened the Freud-Jones debate. She argued that
masculine narcissism was responsible of the assumption that the female feels her genital
to be inferior.
Femininity (1933): Freud defines femininity as a single unique position for ‘normal’
sexuality in women and establishes homosexuality in women as a ‘masculine complex’.
NEW WOMAN: Term referring to those middle-upper class women who had profited
from the educational and vocational opportunities won by the pioneer feminists of the
sixties. The enjoyed increased presence in the public arena. The ‘masculinization of the
New Woman by the misogynist discourse tried to depict her as pitiful, unsatisfied and
asexual woman.
The Intermediate Sex (1914): Written by Edward Carpenter showing a reaction
against the ideals of femininity promoted by the ‘New Woman’. He suggests that the
masculinization of woman was the result of the attitude of these independent women and
links the New Woman to homosexuality.
Night and Day (1919): Virginia Woolf’s novel which, as much of the fiction of the turn
of the century and interwar used the characteristics of the New Woman as codified signs
for providing extra information about strong female characters.
Woman and Her Place in a Free Society (1894): Work in which Carpenter
denounced the objectification of women by patriarchy. He equated private property with the
submission of women to men. Following Havelock Ellis’s ‘angel-idiot’ theory, he argued that
the construction of femininity was something completely alien to women. He objectification
of woman caused lack of understanding between the sexes. His consideration of female
sexuality as a male construct and the need for understanding between the sexes was
shared by many feminists of the period
ANGEL-IDIOT THEORY: Theory by Havelock Ellis arguing that woman had been
trapped in the intersection between an angel and an idiot.
OLIVE SCHREINER (1855-1920): Woman writer born in South Africa, who studied at
London Medical School. She was a feminist and strong supporter of universal suffrage, and
a pacifist who was against the War of the Boers and campaigned against conscription.
Story of an African Farm (1893): Book which was praised by feminists who approved
of the strong heroine who controls her own destiny.
HAVELOCK ELLIS: He had a relationship with Schreiner. They shared the same views
on sexuality, free love, marriage, the emancipation of women, sexual equality and birth
control.
Dreams (1891), Dram Life and Real Life (1893): two collections of short stories.
From Man to Man, Undine: Two novels which were published until after Schreiner’s
death.
SAMUEL CRONWRIGHT: Olive Schreiner’s husband (1894).
Trooper Peter Halektt of Mashonaland (1897): strong attack on imperialism and
British racism in South Africa. She was a pacifist and did not want to give her full support
to the armed rising that led to the Boer War (1899).
Woman and Labour (1911): Schreiner’s work acclaimed as an important statement on
feminism. It had a major influence on large number of young women.
VICTORIA CROSS: She wrote Theodora: A Fragment.
Theodora: A Fragment (1895): It contains the image of a man and a woman entering
a room, the woman opening the door, as two friends.
‘Life’s Gifts’: Schreiner’s short story. The female protagonist renounces the gift of love
in favour of the gift of freedom.
MARY STOPES (1880-1958): She wrote Married Love (1918) and Wise Parenthood.
She wrote manuals on sexology. Sexual ecstasy had to be restricted to marital union. She
was controversial because of her explicit approach to the anatomy of sexual relations and
her frank advocacy of the practice of birth control. She was the first female member of the
science faculty at the university of Manchester. Her first marriage was annulled in 1916
because it was unconsummated. She became a success and wrote more books and edited
the journal Birth Control.
HELENA WRIGHT: She wrote a manual on sexology: The Sex Factor in Marriage
(1930).

KEY TERMS RELATED TO OSCAR WILDE AND HIS WORK

1. DECADENT MOVEMENT: movement linked to the Aesthetic movement, based on the
ideas that art is totally opposed to “nature” understood both in the biological sense of the
word and in the “natural” norms of morality and sexual behaviour. Hence, the art of the
Decadents was artificial and the decadence in their personal lives was expressed in the
search for strange “unnatural” sensations which involved the use of drugs and
experimental sexual behaviour.
2. “THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY (1891) and SALOMÉ (1893): Oscar Wilde´s only
novel and play which are representative literary productions of Decadent literature.
 3. “THE HISTORY OF THE RENAISSANCE”: Walter Pater´s book considered by Wilde
as “the very flower of decadence”, a book which had such a strange influence over his life.
Wilde was a disciple of Walter Pater and founded the Aesthetic movement, which advocated
“art for art´s sake”.
4. THE CULT OF ARTIFICIAL: the gospel of Aestheticism, which rejected the social
conception of the natural. Wilde preached this at each stop on a lecture tour of the US.
5. WOMAN´S WORLD: name of the magazine Wilde became the editor once he was back
in England after his marriage to Constance Lloyd in 1884.
6. “THE HAPPY PRINCE AND OTHER TALES”: a collection of original fairy tales
published in 1888.
7. “INTENTIONS”: a collection of essays dealing with the self-explanatory Art for Art´s
Sake written in the form of dialogues between a new Plato and his young disciples. 1891.
8. “LADY WINDERMERE´S FAN”: (1892) a modern drawing-room play with pink
lampshades representative of Wilde´s witty, epigrammatic style, insolent ease of utterance
and suave urbanity. A combination of polished social drama and coruscating witty dialogue
Wilde had on the London stage for the first time. This kind of combination was repeated in
1895 in the two hits he had simultaneously on the London stage, “AN IDEAL HUSBAND”
and “THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST”.
9. BOSIE: the nickname used by Wilde to refer to a young aristocrat he had fallen in
love with and whose real name was Alfred Douglas. Douglas´s father accused Wilde of
homosexuality and after a series of trials, he was sentenced to two years in prison, first to
Wandsworth Prison and later to Reading Gaol.
10. “THE BALLAD OF READING GAOL” (1898): a ballad written in Reading Gaol
Prison in which Wilde described the severe conditions of the prisoners.
11. SEBASTIAN MELMOTH: the name he adopted when he left prison and settled
Paris where he died on 30 November 1900.
12. “THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST”: (1895) a masterpiece of modern
comedy and Wilde´s most lasting play which strikes a wonderful balance between being a
respected and studied piece of literature and a favourite with audiences. A play written in
three weeks and exclusively for money. The most quoted play in the English language after
Hamlet.
13. APHORISM: also called EPIGRAMS, a sentence containing a wise or witty
comment widely used in the Wilde´s works, especially in “The importance of being Earnest”.
14. “A TRIVIAL COMEDY FOR SERIOUS PEOPLE”: the subtitle of The Importance
of being Earnest”.
15. “HISTORY OF TOM JONES, A FOUNDLING”: Henry Fielding´s 1749 novel
used as a reference, by Jack Worthing, one of the main character of “The importance of
being Earnest”, to the audiences familiarity with comedy of manners (social habits and
customs). The picaresque Jack says he was “found” (this is the reference to Henry
Fielding´s novel) and is confirmed later on in the play by Lady Bracknell who wonders
whether Jack will be “another Tom”.
16. SOCIETY DRAMA: plays presented on stage at that time, based on modern life
set in the rarefied world of the upper classes. These plays could be witty and frivolous light
comedies or they could be ponderous dramatic treatises on difficult social issues, most
often the sexual “double standard” and the “problem” of the “fallen woman”. We hear a
parodic echo of such plays when Jack Worthing says of Miss Prism (mistakenly believed to
be his lost and unmarried mother) “who has the right to cast a stone against one who has
suffered?...mocking this way at the institution of marriage, which Wilde saw as a practice
surrounded by hypocrisy and absurdity.
17. INCONGRUITY: a comic technique used by Wilde which shows the great
distance between what the audience expects to happen and what actually happens.
18. TIMING: another comic technique which is achieved both through the
character´s use of pauses and also through Wilde´s finding of the right moment to insert a
comic motif.
 19. DIALOGUE: Wilde´s technique that contributes to atmosphere and moves
action forward. In “The Importance of being Earnest” most of the archetypical in characters
and in situations is build up through language rather than stage directions.
20. INCONGRUITY, TIMING, FLIPPANT WIT, PUNS, SATIRE, APHORISMS,
PARODY and THE ABSURD: comic techniques used by Wilde in “The importance of being
Earnest”.