Bit obscure, but stay with me.
I studied English Literature at university and read a module called Fin de siècle, which was basically a group of books about both French and English society with a bit of philosophy thrown in for good measure. That’s probably the worst spark notes edition of Fin de siècle literature ever. Oh well.
So, pulling back onto the tracks briefly, when I read these texts I was pretty blown away. Then when I got a bit geeky and started using the internet (surprisingly, I didn’t get geeky until about 18 months ago – I know, hard to believe) I realised that there were some odd parallels between philosophical and critical theories from the Fin de siècle and the way people behave online.
Here are probably the most prominent examples of the transposition;
- The crowd (read Emile Zola’s Nana, you’ll see what I mean)
- The carnivalesque – Bakhtinian theory, based on Rabelais and His World
- The fragmentation of ‘high-society’ in both Arthur Conan Doyle and Zola’s work
I’m going to read much more Fin de siècle literature, find more examples and then explain why I’ve just cited those three, but as I’ve been trying to write this post for about six months, I’m publishing the first half of it as a push for me to write the second half of it.
I’d also like you to contribute and speculate as to why I’ve pulled those three areas out…