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Decadence
A Literary History

It offers an overview of literary Decadence, expanding the range of writers, locales, and time periods that make up Decadence.

Alex Murray (Edited by)

9781108426299, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 15 October 2020

530 pages
23.5 x 15.5 x 2.8 cm, 0.73 kg

'This is necessarily a specialist volume but one which eschews jargon. Recommended for students and scholars of the Aesthetic and Decadent Movements and late Victorian culture.' Alexander Adams, alexanderadamsart.wordpress.com

Decadence, that flowering of a mannered literary style in France during the Second Empire, and in the last two decades of the nineteenth century in Britain, holds an endless fascination. Yet the ambiguity of the term 'decadence' and the challenges of identifying its practitioners make grasping its contours difficult. From the obsession with classical cultures, to the responses to the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, this book offers one of the most comprehensive histories of literary Decadence. The essays here interrogate and expand the formal, geographical, and temporal frameworks for understanding Decadent literature, while offering a renewed focus on the role played by women writers. Featuring essays by leading scholars on sexuality, politics, science, translation, the New Woman, Russian and Spanish American Decadence, the influence of cinema on Decadence, and much more, it is essential reading for all those interested in the literature of the 1890s and Oscar Wilde.

1. Nineteenth-Century Decadence and Neoclassical Aesthetics: Androgyny and Collecting Culture Daniel Orrells
2. British Decadence and Renaissance Italy Hilary Fraser
3. 'Rather a Delicate Subject': Verlaine, France and British Decadence Matthew Creasy
4. Fighting Like Cats and Dogs: Decadence and Print Media Nick Freeman
5. Varieties of Decadent Religion Mark Knight
6. The New Woman and Decadent Gender Politics Sarah Parker
7. Decadence, Darwinism, Science and Technological Modernity Will Abberley
8. Decadence and Politics Matthew Potolsky
9. Seeds of Discord: Decadent Sexuality and Dissipating Species Dennis Denisoff
10. Decadent Poetics After Swinburne Catherine Maxwell
11. Theatre and Decadence Sos Eltis
12. 'Restless Mystical Ardours': Decadence and Music Emma Sutton
13. Decadence in Painting Richard A. Kaye
14. Decadent Poetry and Translation: The Suffusive and the Prosodic Clive Scott
15. Spanish American Literature and the Transatlantic Dimensions of Decadence María del Pilar Blanco
16. Decadent America 1890-1930 Kirsten MacLeod
17. Russian and Czech Decadence: The Fall of Rome and the Destruction of Sodom Kirsten Lodge
18. A Politics of Modernism in the Poetics of Decadence Vincent Sherry
19. Camp Modernism and Decadence Kristin Mahoney
20. Making Decadence New: Carl Van Vechten's Cinematic Fiction Kate Hext
21. Writing Decadent Lives and Letters Ellen Crowell and Alex Murray
22. Decadence in the Time of AIDS Allan Kilner-Johnson.

Subject Areas: Literary reference works [DSR], Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH], Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 [DSBF]

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