A distinguished list of contributors explores a variety of perspectives on the artistic culture of France and surrounding countries during the period 1870 to 1914. Aspects of dance, cinema, theater, poetry, prose, painting, social and political science, history, and medicine are covered in interdisciplinary essays that are both useful to researchers and accessible to students.

The first part of the book, which concentrates on France, assembles essays on the prose, poetry, and painting of Symbolism and Decadence, in particular Mallarme and Moreau; on avant-garde dance and performance; on women's writing; and on early cinema from Lumiere, Villiers, and Verne.

The second part explores the relations between France and several cultures. These cross-cultural investigations range from studies of the Anglo-Celtic "Rhymers' Club" to the Italian Crepusculari and include discussions of Belgian Symbolism and the Franco-Anglo-American Axis. The essays consistently point beyond the late nineteenth century and into the twentieth as they explore the multiple beginnings -- as well as the false starts -- that characterize the period.

This edition is aimed at students, teachers and researchers alike. It presents an alternative reading of this seminal collection of poems. Unlike other editions, the introduction and the notes to the poems are in English, with an extensive vocabulary at the end. Cardwell specifically situates the poet in a special context: his early intellectual formation in his family, in the Institucion Libre (the only secular school in Spain at the time), in the Symbolist circles of Paris and, most importantly, in the ferment of ideas of the young artistic circles of the new century, especially the Helios group of 1903-04. This environment served to shape the intellectual and poetic vision of Soledades. Galerias. Otros Poemas. Thus the poet's maturing vision is traced over nearly three decades, highlighting how the burning intellectual ideas and ideals of the day, together with the poet's own spiritual crisis, shaped and were articulated in this major collection of the period. -- .