![\"Painted](\"https:\/\/cdh.rula.info\/y90sclassroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2019\/03\/Yellow-Book-VII-1.png\")
Baron Corvo\u2019s fictional literary works entitled \u201cStories Toto Told Me\u201d are a series of short stories that appear in Volumes 7 (Oct 1895) and 11 (Oct 1896) of The Yellow Book<\/em> magazine. These stories \u201cAbout San Pietro and San Paolo\u201d<\/a> from Volume 7, \u201cAbout the Heresy of Fra Serafico\u201d<\/a> and \u201cAbout One Way in which Christians Love One Another\u201d<\/a> from Volume 11 fall under the genre of religious legends and folklore. The role of religious folklore in the 1890\u2019s magazine existed to outline the perimeters of morality, while exploiting the actions that oppose those perimeters. An absence of morality appears in the presence of sin, seemingly defined through Roman Catholicism. Although each story varies greatly in plot, the primary characters must all face a challenge in which they choose to go against or preserve their virtue. The challenges include \u201cthe experience of hardship, oppression, and invisibility\u201d (Keates 174). \u00a0Corvo\u2019s work paradoxically captures both moral and social standards and fear. Religious principle is consistently paired with sacrilegious conduct, challenging the reservations held about art during this cultural period. The intricate characters and deliberate plot aim to align with the personal subjectivity of the author, Corvo. Sinful acts such as homosexuality are discussed by artists such as Oscar Wilde, who suffer at great lengths both legally and politically. This negative charge is felt throughout the community of artists, and thus the result is the denial of personal incongruence. This essay will examine the shifting attitudes of the cultural moment of \u201cStories Toto Told Me\u201d in Volume 7 and 11, reflecting primarily on the ambiguity of morality standards during the fin-de-si\u00e8cle.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The 1890\u2019s is a period defined by \u201csocialist discourse\u201d (Keates 171), meaning that society desired to have a larger community based regulation in trade while reducing a free-agent economy. The ideals of the market are analogous to the shifting perspective of the culture. Specifically, ideals were becoming more familiar with diversity that was not popularized and the rising academics began questioning the fundamental principles that defined morality in accordance with the Catholic church. The Yellow Book<\/em> is \u201cin the context of a modern publication attacking the conservative Victorian establishment.\u201d (Marcovitch 83) The fin-de-si\u00e8cle was notorious for the public rejection of sexual divergence against Oscar Wilde, who was forced to stand trial in 1895. Wilde’s sentencing and the cultural move towards more \u201cmanly\u201d pursuits of adventure and imperialism.\u00a0 Though the general feeling towards \u201csexual controversy\u201d was still present within the Yellow Book, this feeling was more discreet and perilous in Volumes 7 & 11 (Keates 168).<\/p>\n Although Baron\u2019s stories were praised in an effervescent manner at the end of the 19th<\/sup> century, the publication occurred during a transitory cultural movement (Keates 162). Baron Corvo is the pseudonym used by Frederick Rolfe to create his writer\u2019s persona through his story telling, plausibly to avoid any controversy surrounding his own name. The persona was \u201cpensive, ritualistic, celibate\u201d to cover up his emotional vulnerability (Hanson 329-330). Corvo suffered greatly from poverty and the rejection from his \u201cecclesiastical dream\u201d that his stories became a haven in which he could express the \u201cdefenseless and alienated self\u201d (Perosa 112). His stories thus revealed many of his personal afflictions concerning his own identity, including homoeroticism. \u00a0His rejection within priesthood is ingrained into the development and specificities of the stories. The three stories focused on in this exhibit allowed Corvo to vicariously experience a \u201cdominant position\u201d (Keates 163). Specifically, Corvo identifies with the peasant who tells each story, as this character has an appreciation for religious scripture and mirrors a comparable social position. Corvo desires to reclaim his power through his own fictional writing.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Decadent movement at the end of the 19th<\/sup> century characterized by a \u201cfascination with cultural degeneration,\u201d in which \u201creligion, sexuality, art, even language itself, had fallen at last into an inevitable decay\u201d (Hanson 2). The true decay comes from the deterioration of direction of what is considered moralistic and honorable. The rejection of transformative thinking and expression in the fin-de-si\u00e8cle may have arguably influenced Corvo\u2019s choice to use Roman Catholicism to mask his rebellion. The use of a \u201ccultivated recourse to primitivism\u201d allows Corvo to use religion as a depiction of justice and morality (Perosa 115). Corvo creates a complex cocktail of \u201cimprobable juxtapositions\u201d (Hanson 2) throughout his three stories. In every story, there is a religious figure who is supposed to be pure and righteous, yet their divinity is bound to humanistic flaws. It is improbable because the divine is suggested to exist above the average mortal through their impeccable morality, yet the characters attempt to create humanistic affinity through their flaws. San Pietro steals and does not obey, Pappagallo participates in heresy due to his own jealousy, and Toto participates in superstition regarding the burial place of the baby. Corvo\u2019s appeal to sanctity through his stories is an attempt to deny and avoid the unconventional aspects on his own sexuality and socioeconomic status. The \u201crevealing striking experimental aspects\u201d of classic Decadent writing sets the stage for the trends in 20th<\/sup> century fiction (Perosa 112).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Religious folklore and legends is a genre that collects tales from the \u201crural working class, elite educated men,\u201d demonstrating that the genre is easily transferable through word-of-mouth (Harris 10). The mentioned stories in The Yellow Book<\/em> are a subtle concoction of \u201cmyth, saints\u2019 lives, and Italian folklore\u201d (Keates 162). The tone of the folktale titled \u201cAbout San Pietro and San Paolo\u201d is traditional folklore in the way that it is presented as a conversation (Harris 4). The dialogue exchanged within the story reflects the conversational tone of the narrator, Nicola, to his listener, Serafico. The story discusses the quarrel between San Pietro and San Paolo while building their churches on Earth. San Pietro \u201curged on by vanity \u2026 had taken the Similarly, in the tale \u201cAbout the Heresy of Fra Serafico\u201d, Nicola defends the religion he practices fiercely, while also fearing he had invented and proclaimed 16 new and unheard of heresies in his sermon. Toto comforts his brother Nicola by relaying a story of Serafico, who was ordered by Father Guardian to give a sermon before the convent after being accused of similar wrongdoings. The character of Fra Serafico \u201cwent about his duties with diligence and humility, feeling so shy, because the things around him were so strange.\u201d (Corvo, 146). Corvo relates to Fra Serafico because he too struggles to go about his religious beliefs in a stereotypical manner. The \u201cpervasive and perennial threats\u201d (Harris 5) of the story influence the audience to refrain from behaving through acts of egomania, such as jealousy or contempt, a pressure felt through Corvo\u2019s generation. \u00a0The point of reproducing stories that teach a lesson through religion is to establish a hierarchy amongst mortal and divine characters. Mortals, such as the reader, are emotionally engaged using a humanistic quality of envy in the story, and are provoked to reject it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The third and final story, \u201cAbout One Way in which Christians Love One Another\u201d from Volume 11, attends to the human\u2019s ability to be a devotee. The mother struggles to help a mysterious woman to deliver a baby, which results in complications and the eventual death of the baby. This tale suggests less that Toto\u2019s mother, has somehow broken her religious faith in practice, but rather accentuates the common tradition of superstition. According to the story, \u201cthe new baby had come and died a Christian, there was nothing else for them to do but to bury it in their churchyard, and that secretly, to defend la Signora Pucci from shame.\u201d (Corvo 160-161) Though the practices of religion are used successfully, there is still a motive to protect themselves from the scandal of the event. They go as far as to not tell Signora Pucci\u2019s partner of the birth at all and chose to bury the child in secrecy. Toto fears that the burial place of the child may taint the fortune of the priest\u2019s descendants for generations to come (Corvo 162). The perception that one\u2019s own transgression may affect the personal affairs of another is exactly the influence religious folktale. The collectivity of the human experience means that we are all responsible for holding each other to a sacred theological standard. The function of legends therefore is to embody the rectitude of the audience, eventually using this lingual approach to influence a culture intrinsically.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In conclusion, the Decadence movement allowed the proper environment for the experimental writings of Corvo. His \u201cimaginative power\u201d is invented to give an authoritative voice to the \u201csequence of brief episodes, descriptive moments, idyllic scenes, picturesque details and decorative touches\u201d of all three stories (Perosa 120). He used his religious beliefs to mask the imperfection of his personal life through storytelling, thus challenging the cultural standards of morality. This observation adds to the scholarly conversation about religious folklore and legend as it exemplifies the shifting attitudes towards the fin-de-si\u00e8cle. Analyzing Corvo\u2019s writing through the lens of Hanson\u2019s \u201cimprobable juxtaposition\u201d helps the reader unify the pressure within society to conform to ideals with a natural tendency to stray away from those same ideals. The fin-de-si\u00e8cle was defined by the upheaval of tradition, thus aligning with both the personal and literary life of Corvo. The significance of this analysis is to understand the historic prevalence of a deep chasm within an evolving society. The implication of the conclusion is that artists were using the ambiguity of their writing to express their desires and receive cultural feedback through rebellious innuendo. Baron Corvo\u2019s \u201cStories Toto Told Me\u201d celebrates the function of hierarchy and punishment through the motives and choices of characters (Keates 175). The conscious use of traditional folklore and legend elements in the three stories allows for both the implicit and explicit messages to penetrate the normative functionalist model of society.<\/p>\n Works Cited<\/p>\n Corvo, Baron [Frederick William Rolfe]. \u201cStories Toto Told Me\u201d\u00a0The Yellow Book<\/em>\u00a07 (Oct. 1895): 209-24.\u00a0The Yellow Nineties Online<\/em>. Ed. Dennis Denisoff and Lorraine Janzen Kooistra. Ryerson University, 2012. Web. [Date of access]. http:\/\/www.1890s.ca\/HTML.aspx?s=YBV7_corvo_stories.html<\/p>\n Corvo, Baron. “Stories Toto Told Me.”\u00a0The Yellow Book <\/em>11 (Oct 1896): 143-162.\u00a0The Yellow Nineties Online<\/em>. Ed. Dennis Denisoff and Lorraine Janzen Kooistra. Ryerson University. Web. [Date of access]. http:\/\/www.1890s.ca\/HTML.aspx?s=YBV11_corvo_stories.html<\/p>\n Ford, Keates, et al. \u201cCamp Aesthetics and Inequality: Baron Corvo\u2019s Toto Stories\u201d Economies of Desire at the Victorian Fin de Si\u00e8cle<\/em>, Routledge, 2015, pp. 162-179. Taylor & Francis Group\u00a0https:\/\/www-taylorfrancis-com.ezproxy.lib.ryerson.ca\/books\/e\/9781317576594\/chapters\/10.4324\/9781315739373-18<\/p>\n Hanson, Ellis. Decadence and Catholicism<\/em>. Harvard University Press, 1997.<\/p>\n Harris, Jason Marc. \u201cAn Introduction to Folklore and the Fantastic in Nineteenth Century British Literature\u201d Folklore and the Fantastic in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction<\/em>, Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2008, pp. 1-35.<\/p>\n Marcovitch, Heather. The Yellow Book: Reshaping the Fin de Si\u00e8cle<\/em>. Literature Compass, vol. 13 issue 2, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, February 2016, pp. 79-87. Wiley Online Library, https:\/\/onlinelibrary-wiley-com.ezproxy.lib.ryerson.ca\/doi\/full\/10.1111\/lic3.12292<\/p>\n Perosa, Sergio. \u201cThe Fiction of Frederick Rolfe, \u201cBaron Corvo\u201d\u201d. The View of the English and American Novel, vol. 4, University of Manitoba Press, 1971, pp. 111-124. ProQuest, https:\/\/search-proquest-com.ezproxy.lib.ryerson.ca\/docview\/1300044324\/fulltextPDF\/B391C644E54C4E7DPQ\/1?accountid=13631<\/p>\n Images in this online exhibit are either in the public domain or being used under fair dealing for the purpose of research and are provided solely for the purposes of research, private study, or education.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a92019 Rachel Bowman, Ryerson University INTRODUCTION Baron Corvo\u2019s fictional literary works entitled \u201cStories Toto Told Me\u201d are a series of short stories that appear in Volumes 7 (Oct 1895) and 11 (Oct 1896) of The Yellow Book magazine. These stories \u201cAbout San Pietro and San Paolo\u201d from Volume 7, \u201cAbout …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":96,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,78,7,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eng810-w2019","category-folk-legend","category-the-yellow-book","category-the-yellow-book1894-1897","column","threecol"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cdh.rula.info\/y90sclassroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cdh.rula.info\/y90sclassroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cdh.rula.info\/y90sclassroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cdh.rula.info\/y90sclassroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/96"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cdh.rula.info\/y90sclassroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3454"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cdh.rula.info\/y90sclassroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8137,"href":"https:\/\/cdh.rula.info\/y90sclassroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3454\/revisions\/8137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cdh.rula.info\/y90sclassroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cdh.rula.info\/y90sclassroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cdh.rula.info\/y90sclassroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}BARON CORVO AS FREDERICK ROLFE<\/h2>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/cdh.rula.info\/y90sclassroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2019\/03\/Rolfe-Portrait.png\")
\u201cIMPOSSIBLE JUSTAPOSITION\u201d IN THE DECADENCE MOVEMENT<\/h2>\n
RELIGIOUS FOLKLORE AND LEGENDS AS A LITERARY GENRE<\/h2>\n
\nproperty of San Paolo for his own church on the Monte Vaticano\u201d and Padre Eterno warns him to not disobey him (Corvo 213). The emphasis behind the moral of story is to not act immorally by stealing or disobeying God, thus reflecting the \u201ccollective experiences and values of the group to whose traditions it belongs\u201d (Harris 4). There is a collective value in the rules and regulations among mortals and the saint. The act of disobeying God\u2019s word through scripture in the Victorian age was a considered a sin, hence the use of \u201clegend elements to symbolize their fears\u201d (Harris 5). The most important aspect of the story is the impending threat of disobedience.<\/p>\n![\"Images](\"https:\/\/cdh.rula.info\/y90sclassroom\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2019\/03\/Yellow-Book-XI.png\")
CONCLUSION<\/h2>\n
\n