Review Essay: Time to Rethink Your Fin Club Membership?

The Edinburgh Companion to Fin-de-Siècle Literature, Culture, and the Arts twenty-three contributions offer essays under four parts: "Concepts," "Places," "Identities: Female," and "Identities: Male." A 9 June 1890 article in Punch remarked that it "is not quite clear what 'fin de siècle' means." The terms has been explored in many ways in the last 100 years. The Companion explore "the meaning of the fin de siècle primarily for literary, artistic and theatrical production." This review-essay offers a detailed look at the arguments therein and offers three possible scholarly directions to think of the term. Continue employing fin de siècle as an ever-broadening synonym for the new cultural ideas emerging and colliding globally. Refocus attention on those cultural works of the period 1880–1920 (or 1870-1930) most associated with the entries on fin de siècle and fin de siècleism. Or treat fin de siècle as a "combat concept." [146 words]