External Examiner (PhD): 'Against the Grain: The Poetics of Non-Normative Masculinity in Decadent French Literature'

Description

This thesis focuses on the French Decadent movement of the fin-de-siècle and its intersection with the emergence of non-normative masculine behaviours and identities, interrogating to what extent masculinity is 'performed' in decadent texts. It considered the ways in which masculinity is negotiated through narrative representation, and the ways in which it is renegotiated and reinscribed as an effect of intertextuality. The corpus includes (but is not confined to) the works of Huysmans, Lorrain, Rachilde, and Mirbeau and draws on various contexts, including late nineteenth-century European culture, book culture and intertextuality, Aesthetics, Symbolism/Decadence/Aestheticism, Gender Studies (Masculinities and Queer Theory), and Irreligion and Occulture.

Period	15 Jan 2020
Examinee	Mathew Rickard
Examination held at	Queen's University Belfast
Degree of Recognition	National