Decadence and Literature Cambridge Critical Concepts Series

Decadence and Literature explains how the concept of decadence developed since Roman times into a major cultural trope with broad explanatory power. No longer just a term of opprobrium for mannered art or immoral behaviour, decadence today describes complex cultural and social responses to modernity in all its forms. From the Roman emperor's indulgence in luxurious excess as both personal vice and political control, to the Enlightenment libertine's rational pursuit of hedonism, to the nineteenth-century dandy's simultaneous delight and distaste with modern urban life, decadence has emerged as a way of taking cultural stock of major social changes. These changes include the role of women in forms of artistic expression and social participation formerly reserved for men, as well as the increasing acceptance of LGBTQ+ relationships, a development with a direct relationship to decadence. Today, decadence seems more important than ever to an informed understanding of contemporary anxieties and uncertainties.

Introduction Jane Desmarais and David Weir; Part I. Origins: 1. Decadence in Ancient Rome Jerry Toner; 2. Decadence and Roman historiography Shushma Malik; 3. Nineteenth-century literary and artistic responses to Roman decadence Isobel Hurst; 4. Decadence and the enlightenment Chad Denton; 5. Decadence and the urban sensibility Michael Shaw; 6. Decadence and the critique of modernity Jane Desmarais; 7. Decadence and aesthetics Sacha Golob; Part II. Developments: 8. Decadence and the visual arts Laura Moure Cecchini; 9. Decadence and music Emma Sutton; 10. Decadence, parody, and new women's writing Kate Krueger; 11. The philosophy of decadence Nicholas D. More; 12. The sexual psychology of decadence Melanie Hawthorne; 13. The theology of decadence Matthew Bradley; 14. The science of decadence Jordan Kistler; 15. The sociology of decadence Jeffrey Sachs; Part III. Applications: 16. Decadence and urban geography Theresa Zeitz-Lindamood; 17. Socio-aesthetic histories: Vienna 1900 and Weimar Berlin Katharina Herold; 18. Decadence and cinema David Weir; 19. Transnational decadence Stefano Evangelista; 20. Decadence and modernism Gerald Gillespie; 21. Modern prophetic poetry and the decadence of empires: from Kipling to Auden Chris Baldick; 22. The gender of decadence: Paris-Lesbos from the fin de siècle to the interwar era Deborah Longworth; 23. Decadence and popular culture Alice Condé.

Jane Desmarais is Professor of English and Director of the Decadence Research Unit in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Goldsmiths, University of London. She has written numerous essays on the theme of decadence and has co-edited several works, including Decadence: An Annotated Anthology (with Chris Baldick, 2012), Arthur Symons: Selected Early Poems (with Chris Baldick, 2017), and Decadence and the Senses (with Alice Condé, 2017). Her monograph, Monsters under Glass: A Cultural History of Hothouse Flowers, 1850 to the Present was published in 2018.
David Weir is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City, where he taught literature, linguistics, and cinema. He has published books on Jean Vigo, James Joyce, William Blake, orientalism, and anarchism, as well as three books on decadence. Those books have had a major role in the development of decadence as an academic field of study, beginning with Decadence and the Making of Modernism (1995), Decadent Culture in the United States (2007), and, most recently, Decadence: A Very Short Introduction (2018).