Decadence and the Senses

Desmarais, Jane H. and Condé, Alice, eds. 2017. Decadence and the Senses. Oxford: Legenda. ISBN 978-1-78188-481-2 [Edited Book]

No full text available

Abstract or Description

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 André Raffalovich, J.-K. Huysmans, Theodore Watts-Dunton, Michael Field, Ernest Dowson, and Stéphane Mallarmé. 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.

Item Type:

Edited Book

Departments, Centres and Research Units:

English and Comparative Literature

Date:

17 May 2017

Item ID:

19811

Date Deposited:

09 Feb 2017 17:37

Last Modified:

03 Jan 2018 10:37

URI:

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/19811

Edit Record Edit Record (login required)