Sherri Rose - Art in Exile: Georges Rodenbach's Flemish creations in Fin-de-siècle Paris.

Georges Rodenbach, a Belgian symbolist author, spent the last ten years of his life in Paris during which time he published several works including L'Art en Exil (1889) and his most well known novel Bruges-la-Morte (1892).

Rodenbach's experience in exile provided him the camaraderie of other Parisian symbolists such as Stephane Mallarmé and furnished him with a sense of distance from his native country, enabling him to create a nostalgic haunting vision of his homeland which permeated his writing in Paris.

This presentation will examine the role of the Flemish city in Rodenbach's later works, along with exploring how thematic elements such as silence and vision are embedded in his experience of estrangement.