Underground Revolutions: Invisible Networks of Terror in Fin-de-Siècle London
Underground Revolutions: Invisible Networks of Terror in Fin-de-Siècle London
This chapter focuses on the most conceptual use of the ‘underground’ that divorces the term from direct spatial connotations. In this ideological framework, Marxism, nationalism and terrorism all converge in the network of subterranean, subversive activities, which extend beyond the borders of London to Russia, Ireland, Continental Europe and the Americas. Although socialist gatherings and political meetings were often spatialised in underground terms as hidden, secret and covert, the rhetoric of political movements was pervasive and contagious on the surface of the city, as political demonstrations and dynamite detonations terrorised the urban imagination. However, the chapter also examines the absence of terrorism in literary works, where the spectre of violence pervades the novel in private and domestic ways. As in previous chapters, women are aligned with subterranean activities, but in a revolutionary context, women are often depicted as ‘networkers’ in the web of intrigue, more threatening than the male counterparts themselves.
Keywords: Revolution, Socialist, Anarchist, Fin de Siècle, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, G K Chesterton, Robert Louis Stevenson, Terror
Edinburgh Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
