Reading Decadence is an intersensorial experience. It is to indulge in voluptuous pleasures and excruciating pains, to sample exotic tastes and sounds, and to envisage states of mind in highly sensual terms. Obsessed with extreme sensory experiences, Decadent writers identified ways of shocking the middle classes and rejecting moralism by turning the conventional notion of 'good taste' on its head. This collection of essays explores the Decadent sensorium in the work of established and less well-known Decadent writers and artists, including Rachilde, Theodore Wratislaw, Arthur Symons, Mark Andr Raffalovich, J.-K. Huysmans, Theodore Watts-Dunton, Michael Field, Ernest Dowson, and St phane Mallarm . Tracing sensual motifs and figures in the work of late nineteenth-century Decadent writers and artists, leading and emerging scholars in the field offer new and provocative insights into the Decadent imagination.
Jane Desmarais is Senior Lecturer in English at Goldsmiths, University of London. Alice Cond is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Reading Decadence is an intersensorial experience. It is to indulge in voluptuous pleasures and excruciating pains, to sample exotic tastes and sounds, and to envisage states of mind in highly sensual terms. Obsessed with extreme sensory experiences, Decadent writers identified ways of shocking the middle classes and rejecting moralism by turning the conventional notion of 'good taste' on its head. This collection of essays explores the Decadent sensorium in the work of established and less well-known Decadent writers and artists, including Rachilde, Theodore Wratislaw, Arthur Symons, Mark Andr Raffalovich, J.-K. Huysmans, Theodore Watts-Dunton, Michael Field, Ernest Dowson, and St phane Mallarm . Tracing sensual motifs and figures in the work of late nineteenth-century Decadent writers and artists, leading and emerging scholars in the field offer new and provocative insights into the Decadent imagination.
Jane Desmarais is Senior Lecturer in English at Goldsmiths, University of London. Alice Cond is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Goldsmiths, University of London.
The tradition of Decadent writing in the 19th century remains a fascinating current in the evolution of modern literature. This new anthology brings together key texts from an international range of Decadent writings and writings about Decadence, many of them previously hard to find and some freshly translated from French, German, Italian, and - in a special section on ancient Roman antecedents - from Latin.
The selection of texts and extracts, more fully annotated than in other sources, includes key Decadent manifestos and declarations of principle by Théophile Gautier, Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde; poems by Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Symons and many others; extracts from prose fictions by J.-K. Huysmans, Aubrey Beardsley and others; critical denunciations, with more discerning responses to the challenge of Decadence; parodies by Max Beerbohm among others of Decadent attitudes and styles; and significant extracts from relevant ancient Roman writings by Petronius and Juvenal. The selection and explanatory notes combine to offer university students of literature and culture at all levels, along with teachers and lay enthusiasts, a rich resource for the understanding of Decadence as an elusive idea and as a literary tradition, in its complex evolution from the 1830s to the fin de siècle and beyond.Designed to appeal to the book lover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautifully bound pocket-sized gift editions of much loved classic titles. Bound in real cloth, printed on high quality paper, and featuring ribbon markers and gilt edges, Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover.
As the nineteenth century drew to a close, decadent authors boldly decided it was time for something new. Their work was was radical, daring and controversial, and it captured a unique feeling and exciting atmosphere. Rich with aesthetic hedonism, this anthology showcases the very best short stories from the movement. In 'The Nightingale and the Rose', Oscar Wilde expertly captures the decadent mood when a young student laments the futility of art; Vernon Lee tells the story of a mysterious and beautiful woman who brings strange misfortune to a coastal village in 'Dionea'; 'A Funeral Oration' by Jean Lorrain oozes with excess and indulgence; 'Enoch Soames' grapples with the fin de siècle fear of leaving no legacy. From famous authors to lesser-known writers, there is no shortage of drama, darkness and decay in this riveting collection. This edition is edited and introduced by writer and academic Jane Desmarais.