Current PhD Students

T.N.Hutchinson

Thesis Title:

Restrained and Graceful Movements, Grotesque and Futile Efforts: Late-Stage Decadence in the Literary Works of Aubrey Beardsley

Supervisors:

Professor James Williams and Dr Jeremy Melius

Description:

My PhD research explores the unique Decadent aesthetic of Aubrey Beardsley’s erotic novel The Story of Venus and Tannhäuser. This includes, among other things, the paradox of crude virility with mannered restraint, the tension between art and life in court culture, the theme of stagnation and infinite regress, the notion of stylised and refined violence as artform, and Japonisme. Though his sexual innuendo has consistently been seen as transgression for transgression’s sake, I argue that he is instead a profound aesthetician and philosopher, as opposed to a satirist with a dirty sense of humour.
My other research interests include late German Romanticism, and Thomas Mann’s construction of Hellenic homosexuality.

Email: ggf537@york.ac.uk