Description:
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title>
<jats:p>At first sight, Renée Vivien seems a rather conservative poet in the French fin-de-siècle decadent tradition. Her modernity lies precisely in the clash between traditional forms usually used by male poets (Alexandrine, Sapphic stanza), traditional contents (melancholy, »mal de vivre« and unhappy love) and a completely new perspective: a female voice talking about her love to other women, celebrating feminine beauty and satirically mocking male ugliness and mediocrity - and reflecting on the possibilities and limits of female authorship in a patriarchal literary culture.</jats:p>