Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Introduction Sham Grandeurs, Sham Chivalries: Architectures of Aristocracy in Ireland and the American South
- 1 Oaks, Serpents and Dandies: Pseudoaristocracy in Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent and John Pendleton Kennedy's Swallow Barn
- 2 The Picture of Charles Bon: Oscar Wilde's Trip through Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha
- 3 Ferocious Beauty: Elizabeth Bowen, Katherine Anne Porter and the Modernist Female Dandy
- Epilogue The Dandy Unmasked: Emma Donoghue's ‘Words for Things’ and Tim Grimsley's Dream Boy
- Works Cited and Consulted
- Index
3 - Ferocious Beauty: Elizabeth Bowen, Katherine Anne Porter and the Modernist Female Dandy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Introduction Sham Grandeurs, Sham Chivalries: Architectures of Aristocracy in Ireland and the American South
- 1 Oaks, Serpents and Dandies: Pseudoaristocracy in Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent and John Pendleton Kennedy's Swallow Barn
- 2 The Picture of Charles Bon: Oscar Wilde's Trip through Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha
- 3 Ferocious Beauty: Elizabeth Bowen, Katherine Anne Porter and the Modernist Female Dandy
- Epilogue The Dandy Unmasked: Emma Donoghue's ‘Words for Things’ and Tim Grimsley's Dream Boy
- Works Cited and Consulted
- Index
Summary
The distinguishing characteristic of the dandy's beauty consists above all in an air of coldness which comes from an unshakeable determination not to be moved; you might call it a latent fire which hints at itself, and which could, but chooses not to burst into flame.
Charles Baudelaire, ‘The Painter of Modern Life’I am firmly and increasingly convinced that artists were intended to be an ornament to society.
Elizabeth Bowen, letter to Charles Ritchie, in GlendinningIn the spring of 1950, Katherine Anne Porter received a letter from her niece Ann Holloway, who was then touring Europe with a New York-based ballet troupe. Because of Porter's literary reputation in London, Ann wrote, she was enjoying attention not only from dance enthusiasts, but from literary ones as well. In a subsequent letter Porter recounted this evidence of her ‘fame in Europe’ with obvious pride and amusement:
It would not occur to me that a soul in England had ever heard of me…. Yet stop. Did I tell you Ann's account of my fame in England – London at least? She was there with the de Basil Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo (all the russes being American girls like her, and de Basil not having seen Monte Carlo for twenty years perhaps) and a young British writing man led her around to literary teas, and introduced her with a set speech ‘… the niece of the American Elizabeth Bowen.’
(Porter 1990: 390)- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Dandy in Irish and American Southern FictionAristocratic Drag, pp. 125 - 177Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2007