The Greek God Pan and Decadence
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| Year of publication | 2016 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | My project explores the surge of interest in the motif of the Greek god Pan in the literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially in Decadence. The aim is to find out the reasons for the proliferation of this motif in Anglo-American literature of the period, facilitating a deeper understanding of this period. Significantly, many of the features of Decadence that Pan mirrors can be traced to his trickster nature: subverting moral and social norms, breaching the border between the sacred and the profane, problematising categories of gender and sexuality, and his paradoxical and transitional character, coupled with his function of a mediator. My approach is analytical and intertextual. I compare the various representations of Pan within Decadence, focusing on the aspects they share and explaining how they reflect or subvert some elements of the culture and society of the fin-de-siecle England and America. My principal methods are then close reading and contextual analysis. The theoretical framework of my research includes Julia Kristeva’s notion of the abject and Foucault’s writing on sexuality. My research starts with the study of Arthur Machen; he was the most influential author dealing with the Pan motif due to his novella “The Great God Pan,” a classic of the horror genre. Apart from canonical authors such as J. M. Barrie, and E. M. Forster, my project also includes the works of lesser-known poets such as Victor Benjamin Neuburg. In the works I have studied so far, the characters of Pan share important aspects, but, interestingly, these characteristics often have radically different implications. For example, whereas in the work of Machen transgressing boundaries is a source of horror, in Neuburg’s writing blurring the boundaries between gender and sexuality is presented as liberating. |
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