Decadence A Literary History

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.

Alex Murray is Senior Lecturer in Modern Literature at the Queen's University, Belfast. His most recent monograph is Landscapes of Decadence: Literature and Place at the Fin de Siècle (2016) and he edited, with Kate Hext, Decadence in the Age of Modernism (2019), and with Jason David Hall Decadent Poetics: Literature and Form at the British Fin de Siècle (2013). His essays have recently appeared in Modernism/modernity; Journal of Victorian Culture; Modernist Cultures; English Literature in Transition 1880-1920; MFS Modern Fiction Studies; Textual Practice.