The Proteus of the mind: Creative imagination in psychology and literature at the fin de siecle
Item
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Title
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The Proteus of the mind: Creative imagination in psychology and literature at the fin de siecle
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:3e0fe6fa206a:10198
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identifier
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10407
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Creator
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McCormick, Elizabeth Harris,
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Contributor
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Richard A. Kaye
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Date
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2009
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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English literature | Science history | Comparative literature | Creativity | Evolution | fin de siecle | Imagination | Psychology | Victorian
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Abstract
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This project will demonstrate the critical role writers played in the fin de siecle cultural conversation about the mental faculty of creative imagination through an analysis of the many characterizations of artists and scenes of creative action in biographies and fiction written by Oscar Wilde, Jean Lorrain, Una Ashworth Taylor, Rachilde, Maurice Barres, W.B. Yeats, Arthur Symonds and A. Mary F. Robinson. While earlier philosophic orthodoxy had treated creativity as an essentially mysterious process, by the turn-of-the-century, the agnostic cloud that had settled over a post-Darwinian intelligentsia transformed these earlier notions of creativity in radical ways as biology came to dictate the terms of socio-medical discussions about psychology. New models for the imagination emerged out of the era's discourses about evolution, degeneracy, psychosis and the supernatural. Late 19 th century biographies of artists - like those of Ernest Dowson, Rachilde, Emily Bronte and William Blake studied in this project - illustrate many of these new concepts. Jean Lorrain's "The Man Who Made Wax Heads" and Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray explore the sexual, psychological and violent dimensions of human creativity. Ideas about gender and creativity in the period were challenged in texts like Rachilde's Monsieur Venus and Una Ashworth Taylor's "The Truce of God.".
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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English
