ALL context

Question 1

Decadence

Answer 1

A period of decline or deterioration of art or literature that follows an era of great achievement.

Question 2

Decadent Movement

Answer 2

A late 19th-century artistic and literary movement, largely centred in Western Europe, that followed an aesthetic ideology of excess and artificiality. Characterised by self-disgust, sickness at the world, general scepticism, delight in perversion and employment of crude humour and a belief in the superiority of human creativity over logic and the natural world.

Question 3

Max Nordau

Answer 3

In his book degeneration, he blamed overstimulation for both individual and national deterioration. According to him, male and female nervous complaints and the increasingly bizarre art world reflecting a general downturn in the human species.

Question 4

Darwinism

Answer 4

The doctrine that natural selection has been the prime cause of evolution of higher forms. Disintegrated the formerly held belief that man was distinct from animal.

Question 5

Eugenics Movement

Answer 5

A campaign that sought to improve the quality of humankind through carefully controlled selective breeding. Later associated with Nazism.

Question 6

Boer War

Answer 6

Lasting from 1899 to 1902, Dutch colonists and the British competed for control of territory in South Africa.

Question 7

Scramble For Africa

Answer 7

Sudden wave of conquests in Africa by European powers in the 1880s and 1890s. Britain obtained most of eastern Africa, France most of northwestern Africa. Other countries (Germany, Belgium, Portugal, Italy, and Spain) acquired lesser amounts.

Question 8

Colonialism

Answer 8

Attempt by one country to establish settlements and to impose its political, economic, and cultural principles in another territory.

Question 9

Fear of invasion

Answer 9

Great Britain had the biggest navy in the world in the 19th century but new technologies made the empire vulnerable.Britain feared invasion from France, terrorists and aliens - “invasion in the tunnels”, hot air balloons

Question 10

Aliens Act 1905

Answer 10

First law to define some groups of migrants as “undesirable”. Act was passed because of fears of degeneration, bad health, and bad housing conditions in London

Question 11

End of the world

Answer 11

Late Victorian society was struck with anxiety about disease, peculiar weather, industrialisation, pollution, immigration. This manifested as apocalyptic literature.

Question 12

Imperial Gothic

Answer 12

Most commonly refers to fiction set in the British Empire that employs and adapts elements drawn from Gothic novels such as gloomy, forbidding atmosphere. Mysticism, degeneration, irrationality, barbarism were all words associated with the “other”, which came to be deeply feared.

Question 13

Degeneration

Answer 13

Many Victorian people believed that society was coming to the end of its reign of brilliance. Many looked to Decadence as evidence of this.

Question 14

Fin de siecle

Answer 14

“End of a century,” mostly applied to the end of the nineteenth century (1890s). Artists and authors attempted to abandon old techniques and discover new ones.

Question 15

The Orient

Answer 15

European scholars influentially defined the ‘orient’ in stark opposition to the West as mysterious, barbaric, irrational and dangerous

Question 16

Aestheticism

Answer 16

Reverence for beauty; movement that held beautiful form is to be valued more than instructive content. Art for art’s sake.

Question 17

The Wilde Trial

Answer 17

In 1895, the popular playwright Oscar Wilde was put on trial and charged with gross indecency which lead to moral panic and anxiety

Question 18

Duality of Man

Answer 18

Gothic fiction examined the sinister alter ego, apt since London itself had a dual nature, respectable streets existing side by side with areas notorious for their squalor and violence

Question 19

Jack the Ripper

Answer 19

Anonymous serial killer around Whitechapel, London. 1888.

Question 20

Biological Criminology

Answer 20

A commonly held belief during the 19th century was that delinquency and violent tendencies were the result of biology and genetics, rather than structural factors. Had some involvement with eugenics.

Question 21

London

Answer 21

The largest city in the world between 1881-1925. Its labyrinthine geography and disorientating fogs were suited to fictions about modern life. Persistently labelled as ‘liquid’, persistently aquatic and amphibious

Question 22

Separate Spheres

Answer 22

Nineteenth-century idea in Western societies that men and women, especially of the middle class, should have different roles in society: women as wives, mothers, and homemakers; men as breadwinners and participants in business and politics

Question 23

Blue stocking women

Answer 23

Women regarded as having too much enthusiasm for intellectual goals, rather than their cultural goals as a housewife and mother.

Question 24

The New Woman

Answer 24

A woman of the turn of the 20th century often from the middle class who dressed practically, moved about freely, lived apart from her family, and supported herself

Question 25

Dandy

Answer 25

A man who is much concerned with his dress and appearance

Question 26

The Gothic

Answer 26

Literature which calls to mind gloom, mystery, and fear

Question 27

Hysteria

Answer 27

Originating from the Greek word for uterus, historically referred to a uniquely female mental disease characterised by anxiety, insomnia, irritability and sexual audacity. There was a commonly held belief that a woman’s womb could move around her body.

Question 28

The Rest Cure

Answer 28

Prescribed to women who are agitated or depresses - given medication and not allowed to work or see people

Question 29

The Irish Question

Answer 29

The dispute initiated by Protestant Britain’s takeover of Catholic Ireland in the 1700s and Britain’s continued control of Northern Ireland has caused tension and violence between the two for centuries.

Question 30

The Indian Rebellion 1857

Answer 30

Indian rebellion against the English East India Company to bring religious purification, an egalitarian society, and local and communal solidarity without the interference of British rule.

Question 31

British Raj

Answer 31

The name for the British government’s military rule of India between 1858 and 1947. Occupation of India brought industrialisation to the subcontinent, but colonialism also denied many Indians equal respect and economic independence.

Question 32

Edwardian Era

Answer 32

The period of time when King Edward VII was on the throne (1901-1910)

Question 33

Christianity & Religion

Answer 33

While the Church was still a major institution, especially as a means of maintaining social status, scepticism began to arise, largely inspired by human technological progress and Darwinism which undermined the plausibility of religion.

Question 34

Romanticism

Answer 34

A movement in the arts and literature that originated in the late 18th century, emphasizing inspiration, subjectivity, and the primacy of the individual.

Question 35

Urbanisation

Answer 35

Following the Industrial Revolution, many moved to bigger cities to work in factories or make use of city infrastructure in other ways. This also produced a rapid population influx to these urban areas, resulting in social unrest.

Question 36

New Imperialism

Answer 36

Historians’ term for the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century wave of conquests by European powers, the United States, and Japan, which were followed by the development and exploitation of the newly conquered territories.

Question 37

New Journalism

Answer 37

A type of writing in which the journalist presents factual information in a form usually used in fiction. Popularised in the 19th century.

Question 38

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

Answer 38

Austrian physician whose work focused on the unconscious causes of behaviour and personality formation; founded psychoanalysis.

Question 39

Pyschoanalysis

Answer 39

Freud’s theory of personality that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts; the techniques used in treating psychological disorders by seeking to expose and interpret unconscious tensions

Question 40

Sexology

Answer 40

The study of sexuality. During the era, more research was conducted into the nature of human sexuality, and the more perverse side of it.

Question 41

Post Colonial Theory

Answer 41

An approach that examines the ways in which the colonial past has shaped the social, political, and economic experiences of a colonised country

Answer 42

High and low culture
Art for elite, privileged, educated classes, versus cultural products that are mass-produced, available to anybody. Began to emerge during the end of the 19th century, with short stories published in newspaper columns.

Question 43

Welfare State

Answer 43

Wouldn’t be introduced by law for another few decades, but philanthropists began to bring attention to the ‘deserving poor’

Question 44

Deserving Poor

Answer 44

Widows, orphans, and the handicapped; were worthy of the care of the community

Question 45

New Science

Answer 45

An emergence of astronomy, physics, biology, and mathematics during the 16th to 18th centuries, including logarithms, analytic geometry, and calculus. The emphasis was on experimentation and tangible proof.

Question 46

Literary Naturalism

Answer 46

A new literary school in the 1890s that spring from realism, made up of young literary rebels who imported scientific determinism into literature, viewing people as part of the animal world, prey to natural forces and internal drives without control or full knowledge of them.

Question 47

Realism

Answer 47

A 19th century artistic movement in which writers and painters sought to show life as it is rather than life as it should be

Question 48

Pop. culture

Answer 48

Found itself fascinated by exotic, imperial terrors, fears of invasion, etc. Many were related to the fear of the unknown associated with unfamiliar worlds.

Question 49

Jingoism

Answer 49

Extreme, chauvinistic patriotism, often favouring an aggressive, warlike foreign policy

Question 50

Zulu War

Answer 50

War in African between the British and the Zulu during which the British gained Zulu land. 1979.

Question 51

Nymphomania

Answer 51

Uncontrollable or excessive sexual desire in a woman

Question 52

Mendel

Answer 52

Augustinian monk and botanist whose experiments in breeding garden peas led to his eventual recognition as founder of the science of genetics (1822-1884)

Question 53

Elaboration

Answer 53

Opposite of Degeneration; development into a more varied, complex existence.

Question 54

Symbolist

Answer 54

Artist or artistic style belonging to the movement in European art and literature, c. 1885-1910, that conveyed meaning by the use of powerful yet ambiguous symbols

Question 55

White Man’s Burden

Answer 55

Idea that many European countries had a duty to spread their religion and culture to those less civilised

Question 56

Ennui

Answer 56

Dissatisfaction and restlessness resulting from boredom or apathy. Associated with the Decadent Movement and Mal de Siecle.

Question 57

Thomas Edison

Answer 57

One of the most prolific inventors in U.S. history. Among other things, he invented the phonograph, first practical light bulb, electric battery, mimeograph, and the moving picture.

Question 58

Looting of Africa

Answer 58

The Europeans paid little attention to the rights of native Africans and many local treasures were stolen, often sent to British museums.