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Literary Criticism General

Perennial Decay

On the Aesthetics and Politics of Decadance

edited by Liz Constable, Dennis Denisoff & Matthew Potolsky

Publisher
University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.
Initial publish date
Jan 1998
Category
General
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780812216783
    Publish Date
    Jan 1998
    List Price
    $27.50 USD

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Description

When Oscar Wilde was convicted of gross indecency in 1895, a reporter for the National Observer wrote that there was "not a man or a woman in the English-speaking world possessed of the treasure of a wholesome mind who is not under a deep debt of gratitude to the marquis of Queensberry for destroying the high Priest of the Decadents." But reports of the death of decadence were greatly exaggerated, and today, more than one hundred years after the famous trial and at the beginning of a new millennium, the phenomenon of decadence continues to be a significant cultural force.
Indeed, "decadence" in the nineteenth century, and in our own period, has been a concept whose analysis yields a broad set of associations. In Perennial Decay, Emily Apter, Charles Bernheimer, Sylvia Molloy, Michael Riffaterre, Barbara Spackman, Marc Weiner, and others extend the critical field of decadence beyond the traditional themes of morbidity, the cult of artificiality, exoticism, and sexual nonconformism. They approach the question of decadence afresh, reevaluating the continuing importance of late nineteenth-century decadence for contemporary literary and cultural studies.

About the authors

Liz Constable's profile page

Dennis Denisoff's fiction and poetry has appeared in such publications as Writing, Fiddlehead, Canadian Fiction Magazine, and West Coast Line. He has published poetry, Tender Agencies,and a novel, Dog Years and was the editor of Queeries: An Anthology of Gay Male Prose, all published by Arsenal Pulp Press. His novel The Winter Gardeners was published by Coach House Books.

Dennis Denisoff's profile page

Matthew Potolsky's profile page

Editorial Reviews

This splendid collection of essays, with its lucid, witty, and masterful introduction by the editors, will transform our understanding of the decadent aesthetic, and demonstrate its relevance to a wide range of important literature and art in Europe, England, the United States, and Latin America in the past 150 years. It is required and rewarding reading.

Elaine Showalter, Princeton University

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