PoetEleg · Aestheticization of Life and Cosmopolitan Modernity: The Poetics of Elegance in the Long 19th Century

Aestheticization of Life and Cosmopolitan Modernity: The Poetics of Elegance in the Long 19th Century

By the 18th century, social origin had begun to lose its determinant power in the social order in European societies. New forms of elites rose to elevated positions; they included not only people of noble birth, but also the nouveaux riches and those who had acquired high social status through meritorious service. In response, ‘soft’ social markers such as ‘taste’, ‘politeness’ and ‘modishness’ began to play a significant role in defining the boundaries of elite social groups, which increasingly became imaginary communities. In the 19th century, these kinds of socio-cultural attributes turned into widely accepted prerequisites to social life as markers of people belonging to the ‘beau monde’ or ‘fashionable society’ in particular. Alongside such social imaginaries of a modern urban culture, a new phenomenon emerged that can be characterized using the term ‘elegance’. Aiming at an intensification of life through aestheticization, the pursuit of elegance combined aesthetics with social issues. The research project ‘Aestheticization of Life and Cosmopolitan Modernity: The Poetics of Elegance in the Long 19th Century’ explored the cultural and historical developments which transformed the classical rhetorical rule of elegantia (i.e. how to speak and write elegantly) into one of the central cultural practices of modernity (i.e. how to live an elegant lifestyle). While mapping out the European topography of the ‘elegant world’, the project investigated the following research questions: 1) What specific cultural scenarios of the ‘elegant lifestyle’ were developed, implemented, or rejected in the interaction between the metropolises London, Paris, St Petersburg and the aspiring European cities such as Vienna, Leipzig, Prague, and Budapest? 2) What was the role of print media in disseminating specific patterns of cosmopolitan modernity and practices of aestheticization? 3) How did representations of urban ‘elegant lifestyle’, in particular literary sketches and reports on cultural and social life, contribute to the spread of transnational socio-aesthetic models? 4) How did adverts and prints in cultural journals and newspapers intensify the cross-border dissemination of the material culture of the ‘elegant world’? 5) To what extent did these images of elegant urbanity pre-shape cultural behaviour and define the sense of social belonging? And finally: 6) More broadly, how did specific scenarios of elegance redefine the elite, re-shape the social structure, and respond to historical events?

Data: CORDIS, © European Union