Overview
The first holistic reappraisal of the significance of the decadent movement, from the 1900s through the 1930s. Decadence in the Age of Modernism begins where the history of the decadent movement all too often ends: in 1895. It argues that the decadent principles and aesthetics of Oscar Wilde, Walter Pater, Algernon Swinburne, and others continued to exert a compelling legacy on the next generation of writers, from high modernists and late decadents to writers of the Harlem Renaissance. Writers associated with this decadent counterculture were consciously celebrated but more often blushingly denied, even as they exerted a compelling influence on the early twentieth century. Offering a multifaceted critical revision of how modernism evolved out of, and coexisted with, the decadent movement, the essays in this collection reveal how decadent principles infused twentieth-century prose, poetry, drama, and newspapers. In particular, this book demonstrates the potent impact of decadence on the evolution of queer identity and self-fashioning in the early twentieth century. In close readings of an eclectic range of works by Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and D. H. Lawrence to Ronald Firbank, Bruce Nugent, and Carl Van Vechten, these essays grapple with a range of related issues, including individualism, the end of Empire, the politics of camp, experimentalism, and the critique of modernity. Contributors: Howard J. Booth, Joseph Bristow, Ellen Crowell, Nick Freeman, Ellis Hanson, Kate Hext, Kirsten MacLeod, Kristin Mahoney, Douglas Mao, Michèle Mendelssohn, Alex Murray, Sarah Parker, Vincent Sherry
Full Product Details
Author: Kate Hext (University of Exeter) ,
Alex Murray (Queen's University, Belfast)
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Imprint: Johns Hopkins University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 2.50cm
, Length: 22.90cm
Weight: 0.522kg
ISBN: 9781421429427
ISBN 10: 142142942
Pages: 304
Publication Date: 28 June 2019
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Manufactured on demand
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.
Reviews
A timely and potentially foundational text. The level of scholarship in the collection is impressive, and the pieces discuss a satisfying range of both canonical and lesser-known figures, with a valuable emphasis on the role of women and black writers. -Matthew Potolsky, University of Utah, author of The Decadent Republic of Letters: Taste, Politics, and Cosmopolitan Community from Baudelaire to Beardsley This book will be of great value to those interested in the literary and cultural history of decadence and aestheticism, of modernism, of camp, and of queer culture. -David Weir, Cooper Union, author of Decadence: A Very Short Introduction The modernists were confident that they had laid it to rest, but the spirit of decadence continued to haunt their works. The splendid essays in this collection show in fascinating detail how a 'new' decadence after Wilde offered perverse aesthetic and political challenges to the heroic narrative of experimental modernism. -Peter Nicholls, New York University, author of Modernisms: A Literary Guide This lucid and compelling collection of essays ranges from the late nineteenth century to high modernism, exploring manifestations of decadence in work from both sides of the Atlantic. Decadence in the Age of Modernism presents a whole that is more than the sum of its parts, as the best collections do. It reveals decadence as a multifariously generative force whose energies fed both the center and the margins of modernism, and which lived on as a style and as a dynamic process long after it was considered over as a movement. A significant statement in a growing field, this book will be an important point of reference for many scholars. -Marion Thain, King's College London, author of The Lyric Poem and Aestheticism: Forms of Modernity Decadence in the Age of Modernism will be of great import for scholars concerned with Decadent art and literature and would work well as a required text for graduate seminars on Decadent literature and visual and material culture. -Julia Skelly, McGill University, Victorian Studies Decadence in the Age of Modernism provides essential reading for decadence studies, continues a necessary intervention in modernist studies, and suggests important changes to twentieth-century literature surveys. -Robert Stiling, Florida State University, Nineteenth-Century Contexts This book vividly demonstrates the value of bridging the fields of Victorian, Modernist, and Harlem Renaissance studies. -Mimi Winick, The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies On the whole, Decadence in the Age of Modernism is a considerable accomplishment that offers much to discover. -The Modernist Review This collection of essays offers a series of fascinating examples that illuminate the nuances of this relationship and, crucially, collectively draw attention to the plurality of both traditions in a period too often dominated by the high modernist canon. -Natasha Ryan, University of Oxford, Decadence and Cinema Decadence in the Age of Modernism is an illuminating and ground-breaking consideration of an under-examined subject, one that ably demonstrates that the fin not only outlived the siecle, it thrived in a new century. -Richard A. Kaye, Modernism/Modernity ...distinguished and exceptional. -Robert Finnigan, Nottingham Trent University, Victoriographies
Decadence in the Age of Modernism will be of great import for scholars concerned with Decadent art and literature and would work well as a required text for graduate seminars on Decadent literature and visual and material culture. —Julia Skelly, McGill University, Victorian Studies Decadence in the Age of Modernism provides essential reading for decadence studies, continues a necessary intervention in modernist studies, and suggests important changes to twentieth-century literature surveys. —Robert Stiling, Florida State University, Nineteenth-Century Contexts This book vividly demonstrates the value of bridging the fields of Victorian, Modernist, and Harlem Renaissance studies. —Mimi Winick, The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies On the whole, Decadence in the Age of Modernism is a considerable accomplishment that offers much to discover. —The Modernist Review This collection of essays offers a series of fascinating examples that illuminate the nuances of this relationship and, crucially, collectively draw attention to the plurality of both traditions in a period too often dominated by the high modernist canon. —Natasha Ryan, University of Oxford, Decadence and Cinema Decadence in the Age of Modernism is an illuminating and ground-breaking consideration of an under-examined subject, one that ably demonstrates that the fin not only outlived the siècle, it thrived in a new century. —Richard A. Kaye, Modernism/Modernity ...distinguished and exceptional. —Robert Finnigan, Nottingham Trent University, Victoriographies
Decadence in the Age of Modernism will be of great import for scholars concerned with Decadent art and literature and would work well as a required text for graduate seminars on Decadent literature and visual and material culture. -Julia Skelly, McGill University, Victorian Studies Decadence in the Age of Modernism provides essential reading for decadence studies, continues a necessary intervention in modernist studies, and suggests important changes to twentieth-century literature surveys. -Robert Stiling, Florida State University, Nineteenth-Century Contexts This book vividly demonstrates the value of bridging the fields of Victorian, Modernist, and Harlem Renaissance studies. -Mimi Winick, The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies On the whole, Decadence in the Age of Modernism is a considerable accomplishment that offers much to discover. This collection of essays offers a series of fascinating examples that illuminate the nuances of this relationship and, crucially, collectively draw attention to the plurality of both traditions in a period too often dominated by the high modernist canon. -Natasha Ryan, University of Oxford, Decadence and Cinema
Decadence in the Age of Modernism will be of great import for scholars concerned with Decadent art and literature and would work well as a required text for graduate seminars on Decadent literature and visual and material culture. -- Julia Skelly * Victorian Studies * Decadence in the Age of Modernism provides essential reading for decadence studies, continues a necessary intervention in modernist studies, and suggests important changes to twentieth-century literature surveys. -- Robert Stiling * Nineteenth-Century Contexts * This book vividly demonstrates the value of bridging the fields of Victorian, Modernist, and Harlem Renaissance studies. -- Mimi Winick * The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies * On the whole, Decadence in the Age of Modernism is a considerable accomplishment that offers much to discover. * The Modernist Review * This collection of essays offers a series of fascinating examples that illuminate the nuances of this relationship and, crucially, collectively draw attention to the plurality of both traditions in a period too often dominated by the high modernist canon. -- Natasha Ryan * Decadence and Cinema *
Author Information
Kate Hext is a senior lecturer in English at the University of Exeter. She is the author of Walter Pater: Individualism and Aesthetic Philosophy. Alex Murray is a senior lecturer in modern literature at Queen's University, Belfast. He is the author of Landscapes of Decadence: Literature and Place at the Fin De Siècle.
