Fins de Siecle/New Beginnings

The turn of the 20th to the 21st century provides an excellent vista for a look into language, especially the English language, literature, cultures, economics and European studies. This work provides several essays that deal specifically with issues of the 1990s, but others provide a contrast by looking into issues of the 1890s and one looks at 1000AD. Contributors debate the significance of the ends and beginnings of centuries andmillennia and touch on the controversy over when these actually occur - the end of the 99 year or the end of the 00 year. As an example of its wide-ranging focus, literary interpretations of the millenium are analyzed from the standpoint of social sciences and vice versa. The contributors were chosen not only for the quality of their individual work but for their capacity to offer unexpected new perspectives on a topical and much-debated theme.