The Wide World of the Fin de Siècle

MICHAEL SALER'S The Fin-de-Siècle World should be considered an essential resource for scholars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It has many, many strengths and very few shortcomings. The collection serves as a reference to the period and its themes, cultures, and politics; at the same time, it also provides a map for future research possibilities. The forty-five contributors offer new and surprising insights into the fin de siècle, allowing us to see even the more familiar topics in a novel light.

Of particular value is a deliberate drawing out of overlapping intersectionalities, wherein no one idea is considered in isolation from others. Coverage of key topics and themes has been ensured, all of the essays are rigorously researched, and many are highly readable. The individual contributors seem to have taken on the challenge of capturing this dynamic, multifaceted period with gusto, offering lively anecdotes, defining complex political and cultural movements clearly and elegantly, and convincing us utterly that this moment of radical change was like no other. Many of the essays have excellent illustrations to accompany the text, and all contributions have extensive bibliographies to facilitate further reading.

Two particular strengths should be noted. The first is attention to areas and regions that are not always accounted for in considerations of the fin de siècle. These include Africa and the Middle East, despite the historical fact that some of the worst atrocities and most catastrophic political decisions were made at the end of the nineteenth century in these very areas. Likewise, focus on Central Europe and the Jewish fin de siècle is quite welcome, particularly as it is informed by newer scholarship that reads migration from Eastern Europe in light of nationalism and colonialism. The second strength is a thorough investigation from multiple perspectives of shifting epistemologies, fields of enquiry, and ways of knowing, and the placing of that investigation within a wider political and cultural context.

Saler's introduction takes a methodological approach, describing how scholarship on the fin de siècle has appeared in "waves." The First Wave might be defined in light of Edwardian and modernist responses to the 1890s, particularly in the tension between decline and renewal. The Second Wave, which encompasses much of the work familiar to readers of ELT, has taken as its charge the study of the phenomenology, aesthetics, and ideologies of the period, "the accelerated pace and complex interconnections of ordinary experience," and the "prismatic perceptions" which "incited a backlash of ideas and practices aimed at restoring tradition and normativity." Saler defines as "fundamental keynotes" of the period "double-minded consciousness, complementary outlooks, and a heightened awareness of the constructed nature of self and world." Finally, the Third Wave takes a global, transnational approach. As John Jervis puts it, this approach allows us to think of the period as a "globalizing mode of sense-making whereby countries and cultures reflect on each others' experiences." The essays in The Fin-de-Siècle World draw on critical stances and scholarship informed by both the Second and Third Waves, working within a Western European cultural paradigm and literary historical moment, while also expanding towards a more global perspective.

The "Overviews" section, Part I, is rooted more so in a Second Wave understanding of the period, beginning with Decadence, and thus provides a helpful grounding for those new to the study of the fin de siècle. Readers familiar with scholarship on the period will not necessarily find anything new here, but the synthesis of ideas is valuable, and this section lays a foundation for the rest of the collection; later essays take these concepts and reinvestigate—even reimagine—them through other lenses. For instance, Stephen Kern's "Changing Concepts and Experiences of Time and Space" might be read productively with Andrew Denning's "Transports of Speed" in Part IV, "Mass Culture." Jervis's "The Modernity of the Fin de Siècle" is foundational, but we might proceed to interrogate that version...