History of subcultures in the 19th century  

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Ubu Roi (King Ubu) is a play developed by Alfred Jarry premiered on December 10 1896, and is widely acknowledged as a theatrical precursor to the Absurdist, Dada and Surrealist art movements.
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Ubu Roi (King Ubu) is a play developed by Alfred Jarry premiered on December 10 1896, and is widely acknowledged as a theatrical precursor to the Absurdist, Dada and Surrealist art movements.

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While counterculture (from Prometheus to Diogenes, from Socrates to Jesus Christ, from Galileo to Voltaire to Che Guevara) can be found in all ages, subcultures -- having the connotation of city culture -- properly start in the 19th century, and more precise in Nineteenth century Paris, as Walter Benjamin, the capital of modernity.

The Industrial Revolution and the Belle Époque bring 19th century Paris the greatest development in its history. From the 1840s, rail transport allowed an unprecedented flow of migrants into Paris attracted by employment in the new industries in the suburbs. The city also became a have for sexual minorities.

The different aspects of this 19th century history include:

Contents

Political

Alternative societies

alternative societies

A number of philosophers also suggested alternative models for society: Charles Fourier (1772-1837), Louis Blanc (1811-1882) and Louis Auguste Blanqui (1805-1881). The background of alternative social thinking stems largely from the history of utopianism.

Sexuality and lifestyle

Bohemianism

Bohemianism

Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic, or literary pursuits. In this context, Bohemians may be wanderers, adventurers, or vagabonds.

The term bohemian was first used in the nineteenth century to describe a subculture of marginalized and impoverished artists, writers, musicians, and actors in major European cities. The bohemian lifestyle is often associated with coffeehouses, drug use (particularly opium), alcoholism, and absinthe. Bohemians were associated with unorthodox or anti-establishment political or social viewpoints, which were expressed through free love and voluntary poverty.

The term emerged in 19th century France when artists and creators began to concentrate in the lower-rent (the proverbial garret), lower class gypsy neighbourhoods. The term "Bohemian" reflects a belief, widely held in France at the time, that the Gypsies had come from Bohemia.

The first usage of the term Bohemianism in its current meaning was by French journalist Félix Pyat in 1834 in an article called "Les artistes". He derogatorily described this personality type as "alien and bizarre ... outside the law, beyond the reaches of society ... they are the Bohemians of today" (tr. Levi Asher). The term became commonplace in the 1850s when the writer Henri Murger began publishing and staging a series of stories called La Vie de Bohème which would eventually become the world-known Puccini opera La bohème.


Club des Hashischins

Club des Hashischins

The Club des Hashischins (sometimes also spelled Club des Hashishins or Club des Hachichin), was a Parisian group dedicated to the exploration of drug-induced experiences, notably with hashish, usually taken orally, under the form dawamesk.

It was active from about 1844 to 1849 and counted the literary and intellectual elite of Paris among its members, including Dr. Jacques-Joseph Moreau, Théophile Gautier, Charles Baudelaire, Gérard de Nerval, Eugène Delacroix and Alexandre Dumas, père. Monthly "séances" were held at the Hôtel de Lauzun, the house of painter Fernand Boissard on the Île Saint-Louis.

Gautier wrote about the club in an article entitled "Le Club des Hachichin" published in the Revue des Deux Mondes in February 1846, recounting his recent visit. While he is often cited as the founder of the club, in the article his says he was attending their séances for the first time that evening and made clear that others were sharing a familiar experience with him.

New Woman

New Woman

The New Woman was a feminist ideal that emerged in the final decades of the 19th century in Europe and North America. It was a reaction to the gender role, as characterized by the so-called Cult of Domesticity, ascribed to women in the Victorian era. Advocates of the New Woman ideal were found among novelists, playwrights, journalists, pamphleteers, political thinkers and suffragettes. Men and women who favoured the new cause gathered, for example, in the Fabian Society in the United Kingdom, a precursor of the Labour Party. The supporters' aim was to encourage women to liberate themselves from male domination, manage their lives and leave behind anything that might restrict their pursuit of happiness and self-realization. Heavily opposed by conservatives, the New Woman movement started to fade away in the course of the First World War when, due to a shortage of "manpower", many women took on jobs and when, shortly after the war, universal suffrage was achieved.

Hobo

Hobo

Hobo is a term that refers to a late 19th and early 20th century subculture of wandering homeless people, particularly those who make a habit of hopping freight trains. The iconic image of a hobo is that of a downtrodden, shabbily-dressed and perhaps drunken male, one that was solidified in American culture during the Great Depression. Hobos are often depicted carrying a bindle and/or a sign asking for money.

Artistic

Romanticism

Romanticism

Romanticism (or the Romantic Era) was an 18th century artistic and intellectual movement which stressed emotion, freedom, individuality and imagination. It originated in the second half of the 18th century, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution. In part, it was a revolt against aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against the scientific rationalisation of nature, and was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature, but had a major impact on historiography, education and natural history.

Bouzingo

Bouzingo

The Bouzingo was the name given to a group of minor Romantic poets, novelists, and artists active in France during the 1830s. They were associated with the Petit cénacle and the Jeune-France and were given an tremendous amount of attention in the contemporary press, which was at that time in the early stages of becoming a mass medium. Its members were Petrus Borel, Gérard de Nerval, Théophile Gautier, Philothée O'Neddy, Xavier Forneret and Aloysius Bertrand.

Their history is told in great detail in the doctoral thesis Pétrus Borel: Background, Reception and Interpretation (1999).

Salon des Refusés

Salon des Refusés

Symbolism (arts)

Symbolism (arts)

Symbolism was a late 19th century European movement of French and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. It overlaps significantly with the Decadent movement and the Aesthetic movement and was present all over Europe and Russia.

Incoherents

Incoherents

The Incoherents (Les Arts Incohérents) was a short-lived French art movement founded by Parisian writer and publisher Jules Lévy in 1882, which anticipated many of the art techniques and satirical attitude commonly attributed to later avant-garde art movements as novel. The "art movement" included Émile Cohl, and spawned seminal works such as Negroes Fighting in a Cellar at Night, introducing the monochrome painting to world art.

Alfred Jarry and 'Pataphysics

Alfred Jarry

Alfred Jarry (1873 – 1907) was a French writer best-known for his play Ubu Roi (1896) and its incipit 'merdre'. Jarry wrote in a variety of genres and styles. He wrote plays, novels, poetry, essays and speculative journalism. His texts present some pioneering work in the field of absurdist literature. Master of the grotesque, he also invented a pseudoscience called 'Pataphysics.

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