Academic literature on the topic 'Decadence'
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Journal articles on the topic "Decadence"
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Volpicelli, Robert. "Countee Cullen's Harlem Decadence." PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 138, no. 5 (October 2023): 1078–93. http://dx.doi.org/10.1632/s0030812923000974.
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AbstractThis essay responds to Countee Cullen's reputation within Harlem Renaissance studies as an out-of-date poet who had little concern for the “new” by reassessing his career under the sign of an older, nineteenth-century decadence. In so doing, it stages a larger exploration of the intersection between decadence and the Harlem Renaissance. I begin by sketching a genealogy of African American decadence that extends from W. E. B. Du Bois to second-generation Harlem writers like Richard Bruce Nugent and Wallace Thurman. I highlight Cullen's place within this lineage by examining the poetry from his 1927 Copper Sun in relationship to Charles Cullen's decadent illustrations for that volume. I conclude by showing how Cullen distinguishes himself among other Harlem writers in the way he uses decadence's investments in decay and afterlife to complicate the progressive views of history inherent to both the Harlem Renaissance and the New Negro movement.
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Lyytikäinen, Pirjo. "Decadence in the Wilderness. Will to Transgression or the Strange Bird of Finnish Decadence." Nordlit 15, no. 2 (March 26, 2012): 245. http://dx.doi.org/10.7557/13.2062.
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The decadence that the Decadents identified in their own civilization was recognized through the model of Roman Empire, although they thought that the Romans were, even in their decadence, much more vigorous than the modern "cerebral" decadents. The figures of the late Empire, which fused the over-ripeness of culture with barbarism, were great even in their decline; the ancient uninhibited transgressions and vices fascinated the decadents although even the imagined debaucheries exhausted the modern decadents. Des Esseintes is, of course, a paradigmatic figure, connecting extreme weakness and fragility of the nervous system with wild sadistic dreams. He is capable of producing vigorous mental images, imagining sublimely horrible figures and emblems of disease, which fell on a fertile ground in later decadent writings.At the same time, the idea of the savage and the primitive which had underwent a radical change, when the romantic idea of the noble savage was replaced by the primitive as the lowest order of humanity, became fashionable even among many Decadents. This debauched barbarian or savage (whose representatives or relics the survived "primitive cultures" were) marked the beginnings of human culture and was the suppressed foundation of all developed cultures. The danger of the return of this primitive side of man could threaten even the most civilized individuals or nations if the ties and restraints of culture were loosened (Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness represents this perfectly). For the decadents, who did not see their own civilization in the terms of progress any more, and embraced ideas of entropy, dissolution and return to a state of new barbarism, the idea of the decline of their culture, thus, could become connected with the idea of the primitive "in us", the primitive lurking in the psyche of every individual and the primitive that was built in the culture itself. As the primitive became, increasingly, identified not only with "primitive peoples" or "primitive races" mostly inhabiting in the colonies or far-out regions, but with groups within the civilized society, like workers, paupers, lower classes, Jews or even women, it was easy to find seeds and forces of the foreseen and, at the same time, feared development. When these ideas were connected with Nietzscheanism, like in the early novels by the Finnish author Joel Lehtonen, they produced a provocative form of Dionysian Decadence; a manic form of decadence combining primitive energies with provocative questioning of traditional cultural values. It was Nietzsche himself who suggested the idea that the "tropical man" or the primitive seen as the evil to be eradicated by the moralists should be recognized as a potentially positive force (Beyond Good and Evil, 197). Lehtonen's decadent figures (especially in his novel Mataleena 1905) find their roots in the primitive life of the Finnish "wilderness" and connect this primitiveness to a provocative decadence, which is à rebours, against all recognized cultural values but has power only as a form of deconstruction and destruction.
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Kwok, Cherrie. "Decadence Today: Volutes, Unfurling Flowers, and Decolonial Excesses in Shola von Reinhold’s LOTE and Thuy On’s Decadence." Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 73, no. 1 (March 1, 2025): 91–105. https://doi.org/10.1515/zaa-2025-2009.
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Abstract This essay examines contemporary depictions of decadent aesthetic excess in Shola von Reinhold’s LOTE (2020) and Thuy On’s Decadence (2021). It posits decolonial motifs of excess as a response to male fin de siècle decadence, motifs which also serve as a new departure for contemporary decadent studies. Shola von Reinhold’s novel undermines both fin de siècle male models of decadence and contemporary forms of white, heteronormative forms of oppression by reclaiming adornment and beauty from a perspective that engages with Blackness, queerness, and transness, embodied particularly in the non-linear figure of the volute. In On’s case, her playful poetics also offer a vision of excess that challenges inherited models. The decadence of Decadence is one in which the woman of color is not an exoticized object of poetic fascination but instead able to define excess and beauty on her own terms. Granting these writers the same space in decadence studies is part of the undisciplining of the field.
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Hurrell, David. "Herbert Spencer: A Case History of Nietzsche’s Conception of Decadence." Nietzsche-Studien 49, no. 1 (October 27, 2020): 171–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/nietzstu-2020-0008.
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AbstractNietzsche characterises some influential individuals – such as Socrates and Wagner – as “decadents” because they promote life-inhibiting values that potentially undermine the flourishing of humanity. A clearly stated but less prominent example of such a decadent is Herbert Spencer. While Nietzsche’s observations concerning Spencer are far fewer than those on Socrates and Wagner, they still have considerably significance for understanding Nietzsche’s philosophy – particularly his views on morality and science – and consequently their role in his conception of decadence. This article argues that Nietzsche considers Spencer to be a decadent not just because of the latter’s advocating of a morality based on altruism, but also the projection of the decadent values of this morality as inevitable, as part of his belief in objective, scientific and sociological truths.
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Hext, Kate. "Ben Hecht's Hard-Boiled Decadence: The Flaneur as Reporter." Modernist Cultures 13, no. 2 (May 2018): 235–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/mod.2018.0207.
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This essay illustrates how Ben Hecht's short stories in The Little Review and the Chicago Daily News crucially expand the scope of burgeoning research into post-Wildean, American Decadence. These works (written between 1915 and 1921) have been over-shadowed by Hecht's later Hollywood career to the point where they have all-but eluded scholarly commentary. However, attention to these vignettes of sensual experience in downtown Chicago reveals that they develop Decadence in a unique direction, which fuses the backstreet Decadence of Arthur Machen and Arthur Symons with the pulp fiction published by Hecht's mentor, H. L. Mencken, in The Black Mask. The result, I argue, is that Hecht's short stories create a hard-boiled Decadence: a new form which uses Decadent language to explore the continuity of Decadent sensuality in the unlikely setting downtown Chicago, at the same time as it uses the emerging tropes of hard-boiled fiction to define the impediments to having a Decadent sensibility in such circumstances.
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Creasy, Kaitlyn. "Nietzschean Decadence as Psychic Disunity." Journal of Nietzsche Studies 55, no. 2 (November 2024): 127–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.5325/jnietstud.55.2.0127.
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Abstract This article offers an account of Nietzschean decadence as a psycho-physiological condition characterized by a failure of psychic integration—a failure Nietzsche thinks precludes genuine agency, since the psychic integration the decadent fails to achieve is necessary for agency. As part of this account, this article develops an interpretation of an underexplored but crucial form of decadence: repressed decadence. Exploring this variety of Nietzschean decadence both enables us to make sense of the case of Wagner’s alleged decadence and adds nuance to predominance models of Nietzschean unity. After developing this account, the article argues that Nietzsche finds decadence especially problematic when it disempowers (or obstructs the empowerment of) the individual who suffers from it, even if only in the long run. The article concludes by demonstrating that in (rare) cases in which decadence facilitates individual empowerment, Nietzsche evaluates it positively, finding such a condition worthy of affirmation.
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MacLeod, Kirsten. "“Art for America's Sake”: Decadence and the Making of American Literary Culture in the Little Magazines of the 1890s." Prospects 30 (October 2005): 309–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0361233300002064.
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Decadence — the literary and artistic movement that insisted on the autonomy of art, reveled in the bizarre, artificial, perverse, and arcane, and pitted the artist against bourgeois society — is most strongly associated with fin de siècle British and French culture. Rarely is it associated with America. And yet, its popularity in America may well have surpassed its popularity in either Britain or France. That decadence was among Europe's most successful cultural exports to America in the 1890s is indicated by the rash of decadent Anglophile and Francophile little magazines that emerged in America in this period. Whereas Britain and France had a handful of decadent periodicals between them, America had over one hundred and fifty little magazines in the period from 1894 to 1898, many of them inspired by European decadent periodicals. What Gelett Burgess, founder of the decadent little magazine the Lark called a “little riot of Decadence” (Epilark) erupted all over America, from major centers such as New York City, Chicago, and San Francisco to smaller centers such as Lansing, Michigan, and Portland, Maine. Described at the time variously as fadazines, fadlets, fad magazines, bibelots, ephemerals, decadents, brownie magazines, freak magazines, magazettes, dinkeys, and so on, these magazines were founded by those one contemporary, Arthur Stanwood Pier, labeled the “brilliant cognoscenti and sophisticates,” the “American Oscar Wildes and Aubrey Beardsleys” of the period (quoted in Kraus, 6).Despite the pervasiveness of the little-magazine phenomenon of the 1890s, these magazines have been all but ignored in recent scholarship. Interest in American periodical history of the late 19th and early 20th centuries has focused largely on mass-market periodicals and the development of consumer culture as in recent studies by David Reed, Ellen Gruber Garvey, Richard Ohmann, and Helen Damon-Moore.
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Clarke, Tim. "The Consolations of Decadence in John Fante's Ask the Dust." Journal of Modern Literature 47, no. 4 (June 2024): 126–43. http://dx.doi.org/10.2979/jml.00048.
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Abstract: Though fin de siècle decadence has seldom been recognized as a formative influence on John Fante's writing, the attitude toward modernity that Fante expresses in Ask the Dust is illegible without recourse to the decadent tradition. Tracing the novel's ideas about ethnicity, religion, and sexuality back to the fin de siècle , and reading Joris-Karl Huysmans's 1891 decadent novel Là-bas as its key intertext, we can see that Ask the Dust refashions decadence into an ambivalent survival strategy for transmuting alienation and suffering into a sense of personal consolation or power. Arturo Bandini, the novel's protagonist, poses as various decadent types, such as the dandy-flâneur, the diabolical apostate, and the impotent aesthete, as a means of transmuting the suffering he has endured as an ethnic other. At the same time, Fante himself employs decadence to critique the mutually implicative violences (ethnic, religious, sexual) that underlie judgments about social decay in the Depression-era United States. Fante's modernism ultimately amounts to an essaying of decadence—an asking of the dust for unsuspected consolations.
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Price, Matthew Burroughs. "A Genealogy of Queer Detachment." PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 130, no. 3 (May 2015): 648–65. http://dx.doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2015.130.3.648.
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Despite their widespread attention to the conluence of queer sexualities and “decadence” in in- de- siècle writing, queer theorists have yet to overcome the two concepts' persistently destructive conlation. his essay explores the latent positive ainities of queerness and decadence in Walter Pater's Renaissance, which links them through what I call queer detachment. A balance of engagement with and withdrawal from history, this critical perspective anticipates queer theory's methodologies as well as other queer modernist productions. Examining Goodbye to Berlin, Christopher Isherwood's chronicle of decadent Weimar Germany, I demonstrate how queer detachment becomes an increasingly politicized method of literary and social world making, a means of reengaging the politics and aesthetics of queer history. hese works, and others like them, encourage scholars to realize decadence's positivity, to conceptualize a queer theory that refuses to acquiesce to residual historical narratives and philosophical systems—without, for all that, refusing their value entirely.
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Coste, Bénédicte, and Jane Desmarais. "Translating Decadence." LEA - Lingue e Letterature d'Oriente e d'Occidente 6 (April 18, 2024): 7–10. http://dx.doi.org/10.36253/lea-1824-484x-14818.
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This series of articles explores the aesthetics of translation of decadent texts into different languages. It shows how decadence and translation are closely linked and how each is redefined by the other.
Dissertations / Theses on the topic "Decadence"
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Weinfortner, Almir Jose. "Cristianismo e decadence." [s.n.], 2005. http://repositorio.unicamp.br/jspui/handle/REPOSIP/278707.
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Orientador: Jose Oscar de Almeida MarquesDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Filosofia e Ciencias Humanas
Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-04T10:00:38Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Weinfortner_AlmirJose_M.pdf: 32069354 bytes, checksum: 701fee6dbae34818dcc3e8625087bfc9 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2005
Resumo: o propósito básico deste estudo é procurar compreender a vontade débil a partir da relação conceitual entre a décadence e o Cristianismo. Para trilhar tal caminho, é imprescindível que sigamos as pegadas de Nietzsche, desenvolvendo uma crítica à religião, mais especificamente ao Cristianismo. O estudo tem início com a discussão acerca do fenômeno da crença religiosa, buscando o seu significado e fundamento. Um dos alicerces básicos deste primeiro momento é a atenção dedicada à estruturação do conceito de fé, tal como aparece em O Anticristo. Desenvolvida esta questão, num segundo momento procuramos compreender a vontade débil a partir do Cristianismo - segundo Nietzsche, melhor representante desse tipo de vontade. Alicerçamos este estudo na configuração do Cristianismo como um "mau inimigo", nos conceitos de "corrupção da vontade" e "compaixão" - elementos conceituais de importância considerável na caracterização do Cristianismo desenvolvida por Nietzsche. Esta discussão encaminha para o desenvolvimento do capítulo que trata do conceito de décadence. O estudo tem início com a apresentação do que Nietzsche considera sua "experiência pessoal com a décadence", da qual ele se considera um "mestre". Na seqüência do capítulo, aprofundamos a discussão do conceito de décadence, apresentando a influência que Nietzsche teve da leitura da obra Essais de psychologie contemporaine, de Paul Bourget, a partir das críticas que faz à Richard Wagner, em O Caso Wagner. Talvez seja nessas críticas que se pode perceber de uma forma melhor sistematizada as características do processo de décadence. Processo este que encontra na vontade asceta o seu melhor representante e no Cristianismo a sua melhor sustentação. Feitas discussões conceituais básicas, no final do capítulo procuramos mostrar, nas pegadas de Nietzsche, o Cristianismo como "religião da décadence". Por fim, no quarto e último capítulo, buscamos perceber os fundamentos da afirmação de que o Cristianismo é o principal represente da décadence, a partir de sua origem e caracterização histórica. Para tanto, seguimos o percurso conceitual desenvolvido por Nietzsche em O Anticristo, passando pela história de Israel, a interpretação do tipo psicológico de Jesus e sua desfiguração histórica, cujo principal responsável foi o apóstolo Paulo. Uma das principais preocupações da filosofia de Nietzsche foi a denúncia de um tipo de vontade que se quer forte negando os fundamentos da própria força, na afinnação de valores que enfraquecem o tipo homem.E aqui nos deparamos com o Cristianismo, como a religião responsável pela universalização desses valores. Desenvolvendo o percurso teórico apresentado neste estudo, procuramos compreender alguns dos traços da indignação filosófica nietzscheana
Abstract: The basic purpose of this research is to try to comprehend the weak wish from the conceptual relation between décadence and the Christianity. To thresh such way, it is essential to follow Nietzsche's footprints, developing a criticism to the religion, more specifically to the Christianity. The study has beginning with the discussion conceming the religious belief phenomenon, seeking your meaning and foundation. One of the basic foundations of this first moment is the dedicated attention to the faith concept structuring, just as it appears on The Antichrist. Developed this matter, in a second moment we try to comprehend the weak wish from Cristianity - according to Nietzsche, the best representative of this kind of wish. We base this study on the Christianity configuration as a "bad enemy", in the "wish corruption" concepts" and "compassion" - conceptual elements with considerable importance in Christianity's characterization developed by Nietzsche. This discussion forwardfor the chapter development that care for décadence concept. The study has beginning with the presentation that Nietzsche considers his "personal experience with décadence", in which he considers himself as a "master". In the chapter sequence, deepen décadence concept discussion, introducing the influence that Nietzsche had of the work reading Essais de psychologie contemporaine, of Paul Bourget, from his criticisms to Richard Wagner, in The Case of Wagner. Perhaps is in these criticisms that is possible to realize in a better systematized form the characteristics of décadence process. Process that finds in the weak wish your best representative and in the Christianity its best support. Done basic conceptual discussions, at the end of the chapter we try to show, in the footprints of Nietzsche, the Christianity as a "décadence religion". Finally, in the fourth and last chapter, we seek to realize the affinnation of the foundations that the Christianity is the principal representative of décadence, from its origin and historica1 characterization. For so much, we follow the conceptual route developed by Nietzsche in The Antichrist, passing through Israel's history, the interpretation of Jesus's psychological type and his historical disfigurement, which principal responsible was the apostle Paulo. One of the principal philosophy preoccupations of Nietzsche was the accusation of a kind ofwish that is wanted strongly denying the foundations ofthe force, in the values affinnation that weaken the man. And here we come across to the Christianity, as the responsible religion for universalization of these values. Developing the introduced theoretical route in this study, we try to comprehend some of the philosophical indignation nietzscheanna traces
Mestrado
Filosofia
Mestre em Filosofia
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Bowles, Henry Miller. "Anatomy of "Decadence"." Thesis, Harvard University, 2016. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:33493344.
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Examining the perception of literary decline in Greek, Latin, Arabic, and Persian, this study unearths an enduring taboo, one little changed by place and time, against verbal creation too readily sacrificing “nature” and “truth” to artifice and phantasy. The fading of the taboo after the nineteenth century, when “Decadent” yields to a non-normative name for the present (“Modern”), is without precedent. Demonstrating the opprobrium’s enduring nature, this study compares for the first time four literary traditions’ confrontations with a “Decadence” whose similarities have been conjectured since philology’s “golden age.”
Chapter I examines two ancient polemics against decline, the tableaux of decay painted by the Avestan liturgical texts and the Attic Greek thinkers before new attitudes towards verbal creation. A similar tableau emerges in Roman reactions to post-Augustan eloquentia’s “decline,” as the analysis of Tacitus in chapter II demonstrates. Chapter III gives voice to non-specialist Imperial reactions to the “decline” heralded by the Second Sophistic, analyzing Plutarch’s and Marcus Aurelius’s rejections of verbal art. Chapter IV considers the effort to regulate artifice within the rhetorical tradition, examining the two great Hellenistic and Imperial authorities (Demetrius and Quintilian).
Chapter V finds the prohibition unbroken in the earliest Arabic debate over suqāṭ (“Decadence”). Al-Āmidī’s Muwāzana is a summary statement of the rejection of verbal creation too enamored of facticity. Conversely, chapter VI looks to post-Classical Persian voices enshrining this very conception of verbal creation. Suhrawardī, Mullā Ṣadrā, and Ṣāʾib call for a language reflective of little other than wahm (“imagination”) and himma (“desire”).
Chapter VII examines “Decadence” in Greek and Arabic post-Classical fiction. The erosion of μῦθος by ψυχή as the banal desire of non-heroic protagonists eclipses action, as phantasy, shown through the pathetic fallacy, irradiates out into the world, supports critics’ contention: Imperiousness of imagination goes with the genera dicendi’s loosening and the pull of language from the inhuman towards personal fancy. “Decadence” in fiction reflects a literature democratized, one mirroring (petty-) bourgeois interests. This is, argues chapter VIII, a premonition of Modernity: With Gutenberg and Calvin, with an unprecedented accessibility and banality of letters, the taboo against subjectivism and facticity recedes.Comparative Literature
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Riley, Nathan T. "Decadence and creation /." Available to subscribers only, 2007. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1453232581&sid=8&Fmt=2&clientId=1509&RQT=309&VName=PQD.
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Pittock, Murray. "Decadence and the English tradition." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1986. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:6fa01d5c-e900-4ee8-9fb6-a8c3645e0bdd.
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The thesis sets out to do two things. It seeks first of all to describe the revival of interest in the Caroline era which defines the nature of an "English Tradition" in the Eighteen Nineties. Secondly, in doing so it seeks to reappraise three significant poets of that era, Ernest Dowson, Lionel Johnson, and Francis Thompson, in terms of their participation in this revival. The first chapter, "Craving Viaticum", deals with the general background of the Eighteen Nineties period. It suggests that the Symbolist movement equates with the Decadent one in a more direct way than has often been allowed, and deals with the era's enthusiasm for nostalgia and past ages as part of its reaction against current society. It also explores the period's allegiance to hero-figures. The second chapter, "The French Connection: Pater's Part", deals with Walter Pater, and evaluates him in terms of his art and criticism, suggesting how these develop from a nostalgic desire to re-create past ages in the image of his present ideals. The more exaggerated claims made by critics of his work for the influence of French writers on him are questioned, and Pater's relation to the "English Tradition" is discussed. In the third chapter, "The French Connection: Other Approaches", the tendentiousness of those critics who attempt to define the entire Decadent era in Britain in terms of French influences is discussed and exposed. The fourth chapter, "New Births of Decadence: The English Tradition and the Seventeenth Century", deals with the relation of the literature of the period to the Caroline era in detail, and the fifth chapter, "Of Academic Interest", is concerned with analysing this relationship through discussion of both contemporary and present-day critics, adducing statistical evidence to prove a resurgence of interest in the writers of the Caroline era in the period 1880-1910. The sixth chapter, "By the Statue of King Charles: The Jacobite Revival" deals with the political and religious aspects of the Caroline revival, and charts the growth of neo-Jacobitism in the Eighteen Nineties and its relation to literary history. The seventh chapter, "Against Nature: Defining Decadence", suggests that the root of Decadent thinking is myth, and that the counterpart of Symbolism in the world of decadent nostalgia was the iconic religious and political culture of the court of King Charles I, a convenient archetype for Decadent myths of ritual, aristocracy, and martyrdom. This discussion closes the first part of the thesis. "Francis Thompson, Faithful Decadent: Catholics and Criticism" is Chapter Eight. It discusses Francis Thompson in relation to his critics, and the manner in which views of his work have been polarised between two main schools of criticism. Chapter Nine, "Faithful in my Fashion", suggests a resolution of this historically polarised critical discussion by assessing Thompson's poetry in close relationship with the work of the seventeenth-century sacred poets. The tenth chapter, "Waif of Romance: The Poetry of Ernest Christopher Dowson", assesses Dowson in relation to Herrick and the Cavalier lyrists, discussing also how he stands as a type in relation to his age. The eleventh chapter, "Lionel Johnson: One of Those Who Fall: His Life and Ideas", is concerned with the crisis in Johnson's thought over the natures of guilt and beauty, and how this is illustrated in his poetry. The twelfth and final chapter, "The Life and Work of Lionel Johnson: A Long Blast Upon the Horn: His Work and Themes", assesses Johnson's nostalgia for the Stuart era in terms of a resolution of his present poetic crisis through past values. His intellectual and intertextual relationships with Ben Jonson and Marvell are also discussed. The thesis closes with an assessment of Johnson's achievement based on his allegiance to the Caroline revival with which the argument throughout has been concerned.
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Pino, Morales Cristián. "Moby Dick and trascendental Decadence." Tesis, Universidad de Chile, 2007. http://repositorio.uchile.cl/handle/2250/110469.
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Benhardus, Nellene. "British literary decadence and religion." Diss., University of Iowa, 2018. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/6055.
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Throughout British decadent literature, authors creatively experiment with religion. While part of this experimentation is a matter of how authors represent religious subjects or syncretized religious traditions, a much more foundational level of this experimentation seeks to redefine “the religious” altogether. Collectively, the authors in this study seek to redefine “religion” as focused around community, ritual, and aestheticism over creed or dogma. This new definition resonates with the way many twentieth-century sociologist, theologians, and psychoanalytic theorists have discussed the nature and role of religion in Western society, and I rely on these thinkers throughout my methodology.
Also central to my methodology is my suggestion that the primary lens through which critics often read British decadence is the lens of experimentation and redefinition. It has been well established that British decadents creatively experimented with their representations of gender and sexuality, their use of genre, and their incorporation of Western philosophy, yet their treatment of religion—specifically the Western religious traditions which appear in their works—has been largely unexamined. This project argues that the British decadent authors’ creative treatment of religion is central to their works and to their broader experimental project.
In my first chapter, I suggest that the experimental work that Pater does with philosophy, art theory, and genre has its roots in the experimental work he does with religion. Pater espouses a syncretic approach to religion which sees Christianity as the most recent, and most evolved, link in a series of conversant religious and philosophical traditions. At the same time, he opposes the institutionalization of religion as well as any violence that might take place in its name. In my second chapter, I claim that Oscar Wilde’s destabilization of language—separating words from their denotative meanings—lays the groundwork for his separation of religious ideology from the aesthetic and communal elements of religion. My third chapter argues that decadent religion, as imagined by Pater and Wilde, was not always easily integrated into religious life. I suggest that the sadomasochistic imagery seen throughout some of Francis Thompson’s works signifies a larger conflict between his attraction to decadence and his devotion to Catholicism. In the final chapter, I consider Vernon Lee, a woman writer who spent much of her life in Continental Europe. I claim that her position on the fringes of British, male, decadent society allowed her a unique vantage point, from which she repeatedly examined the decadent religious project even as she valued a secular, moral humanism over that project.
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Wishart, Ruth. "Georg Trakl and the literature of decadence." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 1994. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/13361.
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This thesis examines the poetry of Georg Trakl within the context of literary decadence in Europe at the turn of the century (1880-1914). It provides an analysis of Trakl's early writing, and traces themes of literary decadence which recur throughout his work, particularly in the late prose and the dramatic fragment of 1914. In so doing, it also undertakes a comparative study of Trakl's poetry and decadent literature in Austria, Germany, France and England. Chapter One looks at the literary background and attempts a definition of what was understood by literary decadence in France and Germany at the end of the nineteenth century. Chapter Two examines motifs of crime and horror in Trakl's writing, paying particular attention to the concept of Lustmord in the early dramas Blaubart and Don Juans Tod and the later dramatic fragment of 1914. Chapter Three examines the issue of sexual guilt, and the portrayal of women in Trakl's poetry, from the femme fatale of the early poetry to the figure of the sister and the androgyne in the later poetry. Chapter Four traces the theme of blasphemy from the early lyric to the last poetic utterances of 1914, and touches briefly on the question of Trakl as a Christian poet. Chapter Five looks at motifs of isolation, obsession with death and decay, and poetry as the expression of the poet's etat d'ame. Chapter Six provides an analysis of the language and style of the early poetry, focusing on Trakl's affinity with the style of literary decadence.
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Gable, Nicolette. "Morbid Love: American Decadence in the 1890s." W&M ScholarWorks, 2016. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1477068588.
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This dissertation engages with a neglected group of writers, artists, and intellectuals in the United States who identified with Decadence, a European literary and artistic movement. Decadence was a label, embraced by some, that refers to a state of art and literature that suggests the end of an Empire: luxurious, imitative, corrupt, sensuous, and ultimately worthless. Self-professed Decadents elevated artificiality, morbidity, sensuality, and pessimism. They also lived lives, both imaginary and real, of separation from the world, attempting to fully embody otherness as they watched the world change around them and anticipated the fall of civilization. I question how these supposedly foreign ideas worked in America, in a transatlantic conversation that reveals yet another aspect of the transition to modernity in America. I suggest “morbid love” as key to understanding the cultural work of Decadence, using it to mean both a love of illness and disease that the Decadents evidenced, as well as a love that in itself was doomed to death. In this dissertation I argue the following. First, I build on work establishing the existence of American Decadence by emphasizing the cultural engagement of Decadence despite its self-professed insularity and rarity. Second, I argue that Decadence in America exemplifies a particular moment in the intellectual histories of degeneration theory and sexuality that has been largely ignored. While most studies of degeneration theory emphasize the power of the theorists and the low social status of theorized, Decadents brought degeneration to the upper classes, the learned, those with cultural capital. They acted as both theorists and theorized. In terms of sexuality, Decadence created a space that fit into neither the standard acts paradigm, nor the following identity paradigm, suggesting that sexuality was a matter of artistic and aesthetic choice and taste. Third, I argue that these deviations from standard narratives show that American Decadents performed a political queerness that functioned as a cultural critique and created a space that complicates our understanding of the period. Each chapter of this dissertation explores an aspect of the Decadent cultural criticism, emphasizing the deliberate queerness, or morbidity as they would phrase it, of their stance. It is now standard in studies of structures to examine the construction of the “normative” condition (whiteness, heterosexuality, masculinity, etc.) rather than the deviant. I argue, however, that this approach automatically associates those with power as normative and those without as deviant. I hope in this work to complicate that narrative.
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Manfredi, Paul Richard. "Decadence in modern Chinese poetry problems and solutions /." access full-text online access from Digital dissertation consortium, 2001. http://libweb.cityu.edu.hk/cgi-bin/er/db/ddcdiss.pl?3024264.
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Pereira, Eloíse Mara Grein. "The imagery of decadence in Tennessee Williams' Vieux Carré." reponame:Repositório Institucional da UFPR, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/1884/24341.
Full textBooks on the topic "Decadence"
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Craft, William R. Decadence. [Portage, MI] (406 E.Van Hoesen Blvd., Portage 49002): Zero Books, 2004.
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Hanson, Ellis. Decadence and Catholicism. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1997.
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Gagnier, Regenia. Individualism, Decadence and Globalization. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2010. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9780230277540.
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MacLeod, Kirsten. Fictions of British Decadence. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2006. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9780230504004.
Full textBook chapters on the topic "Decadence"
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Berkoff, Steven. "Decadence." In A World Elsewhere, 67–72. Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2019. |: Routledge, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780429341144-11.
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Berkoff, Steven. "Decadence." In A World Elsewhere, 125–47. Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2019. |: Routledge, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780429341144-26.
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Jasper, David. "Decadence." In The Selected Works of Margaret Oliphant, Part II Volume 8, 20–28. London: Routledge, 2024. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781003513216-5.
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Tate, Andrew. "Decadence." In The Blackwell Companion to the Bible in English Literature, 587–99. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9781444324174.ch42.
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Hobson, J. A., and Morris Ginsberg. "Decadence." In L. T. Hobhouse, 336–40. London: Routledge, 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781003325260-29.
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Pynsent, Robert B. "Czech Decadence." In Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages, 348–63. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2004. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/chlel.xix.41pyn.
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Bristow, Joseph. "Female Decadence." In The History of British Women's Writing, 1880-1920, 83–96. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-39380-7_7.
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Doidge, Scott. "Bourgeois decadence." In The Anxiety of Ascent, 39–73. 1 Edition. | New York : Routledge, 2019. | Series: Morality, society and culture: Routledge, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781351267168-3.
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Wilken, Christian. "Weird Decadence." In Reading Lovecraft in the Anthropocene, 33–40. New York: Routledge, 2025. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003545446-4.
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MacLeod, Kirsten. "Decadent Positionings: Decadence and the Literary Field." In Fictions of British Decadence, 38–56. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2006. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9780230504004_3.
Full textConference papers on the topic "Decadence"
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Simarmata, Nicholas, Kwartarini Yuniarti, Bagus Riyono, and Bhina Patria. "The Decadence of Gotong Royong." In Proceedings of the 2019 Ahmad Dahlan International Conference Series on Education & Learning, Social Science & Humanities (ADICS-ELSSH 2019). Paris, France: Atlantis Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.2991/adics-elssh-19.2019.16.
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Indratmo, Aloysius, Wakit Rais, Dwi Susanto, and Susanto Susanto. "Java Society Moral Decadence in Serat Wicara Keras." In Proceedings of the 4th BASA: International Seminar on Recent Language, Literature and Local Culture Studies, BASA, November 4th 2020, Solok, Indonesia. EAI, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.4108/eai.4-11-2020.2314220.
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Clua Uceda, Álvaro. "Slussen 1935-2015: diagnóstico de una ruina moderna." In Seminario Internacional de Investigación en Urbanismo. Barcelona: Facultad de Arquitectura. Universidad de la República, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.5821/siiu.6160.
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El proyecto del Slussen en Estocolmo es hoy una ruina del movimiento moderno. Aquella visión optimista y eterna de la arquitectura funcionalista se presenta incierta y desproporcionada tras menos de un siglo de pervivencia. Paredes desconchadas, metales oxidados por el salitre, azulejos rotos, tiendas en decadencia y paseantes en sombra muestran un espacio hoy muy distinto de aquella “elegancia” que pregonara en 1935 el periódico Svenska Dagbladet ante el proyecto de Tage William-Olsson. ¿Cuáles son las causas de la decadencia de ese intersticio urbano? ¿Es en origen un proyecto erróneo, una historia malograda? Las respuestas se argumentan desde un recorrido intencionado por algunos momentos clave de su transformación: en el rastro de esbozos nunca realizados, en las vacilaciones del proyecto original, en las instantáneas de su inauguración, en sus detalles de acabados y comercio o finalmente en las imágenes presentadas al concurso internacional de 2008. Quizás puedan argumentarse ahí las futuras intervenciones que se ciernen sobre el Slussen moribundo: ¿mirada nostálgica, oportunismo, tabula rasa? The Slussen project in Stockholm is today a ruin of the modern movement. After less than a century of life, the place appears in an uncertain and disproportionate way, far from the optimistic and eternal vision of functionalist architecture. Flaking walls, oxidized metals, broken tiles, decadent shops and pedestrians lost in the shadow of the infrastructure show a very different space of that "elegant" prototype declared by the Svenska Dagbladet in 1935 on the built project of Tage William-Olsson. Which are the reasons for the decadence of this urban interstice? Is the original Slussen designed by Tage William-Olsson a wrong project, a failed story? In this article, answers are argued following an intentional trip through some key episodes of its existence: through the traces of sketches ever executed and the variations of the original project, through some images of its inauguration and the subtle details in the bright shopping stores and, finally, through the reading of the proposals presented to the recent international competition in 2008. Perhaps the future transformation of the dying Slussen could learn some arguments from the experience of its own past. ¿Nostalgic view, opportunism, tabula rasa?
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Valchev, Valeri. "Nietzsche’s nihilism and the crisis of values." In 7th International e-Conference on Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences. Center for Open Access in Science, Belgrade, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.32591/coas.e-conf.07.20199v.
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The present paper analyzes Nietzsche’s ideas about the cultural crisis from the standpoint of nihilism. According to Nietzsche, nihilism takes over modern civilization and raises the question of values. To the decline, or as Nietzsche call it, “the decadence” that led to the crisis in values, Nietzsche contrasts his “active” nihilism, which has to find “new values”. From a perspectivist point of view, the revaluation of all values through which the contemporary humanity must overcome the nihilism and project its future, is considered.
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"Exile, Decadence and Dystopia: An Intertextual Analysis of the Book of Esther and the Hunger Games." In Nov. 20-22, 2017 Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia). URST, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.17758/urst.iah1117002.
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Ratmiyati, Ratmiyati, and Ana Andriani. "Implementation of Character Education in the Content of Citizenship Education Lessons on Efforts to Prevent Moral Decadence." In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Social Sciences, ICONESS 2021, 19 July 2021, Purwokerto, Central Java, Indonesia. EAI, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.4108/eai.19-7-2021.2312736.
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Čeč, Dragica. "Complex legal and political use of right of domicile in the late Habsburg Monarchy." In Decade of decadence: 1914–1924 spaces, societies and belongings in the Adriatic borderland in historical comparison. Znanstveno-raziskovalno središče Koper, Annales ZRS, Slovenija, 2024. http://dx.doi.org/10.35469/978-961-7195-46-0_01.
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Modern citizenship embodies a triad of dimensions: a legal status granting rights, a principle underpinning democratic self-governance, and a conception of collective identity and membership [Joppke 2010]. This nuancedconcept of citizenship was partially introduced to the successor states following the dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy. In the 19th century, the right of domicile (Heimatrecht) exhibited certain characteristics akin to modern citizenship but also served as a “technology” [Cruikshank 1999] for the practical management of mobility, encompassing both impoverished individuals and migrant workers. Political debates and policies regarding mobile populations during this period were pulled in two conflicting directions. On one side, there was a drive to control and secure the movement of these “dangerous” population groups. On the other, there was a need to meet labor demands, which necessitated greater freedoms [cf. Foucault 2007]. Immigrant men and women, particularly those experiencing temporary unemployment, improper behavior, incapacity to work, poverty, chronic illness, or those seeking access to local, municipal, and provincial politics, faced discrimination based on the right of domicile. They were often subjected to close scrutiny by municipal authorities and native-born residents. A change of residence within the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy could lead to an individual’s perception of themselves, and by others, as foreigners, regardless of the high mobility and multicultural nature of urban centers such as Vienna and Trieste. Nevertheless, the concept of “foreignness” is a variable construct, changing according to political, economic, and social circumstances and networks. Following the dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy, the exclusionary tools of pertinency automatically granted citizenship to certain individuals, irrespective of their workplace or long absence from their domicile municipality. However, this right of pertinence also caused significant social trauma across post-Habsburg Europe, leaving many at risk of statelessness (Kirch-ner-Reill et al.). Despite the extensive and varied application of the right of domicile in different social contexts within the late 19th-century Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, some recent historical analyses reduce its meaning to a mere “legal mechanism that communities used to avoid the costs and presence of persons considered socially undesirable.”
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Mithans, Gašper. "The beginnings of anti-fascism in Venezia Giulia and the Marezige uprising." In Decade of decadence: 1914–1924 spaces, societies and belongings in the Adriatic borderland in historical comparison. Znanstveno-raziskovalno središče Koper, Annales ZRS, Slovenija, 2024. http://dx.doi.org/10.35469/978-961-7195-46-0_02.
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Fascism in the border region of Venezia Giulia/Julija krajina was confronted with the unfamiliar social and political conditions, ‘tradition’ and multiculturalism of the former territories of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In this territory, the beginnings of the heterogeneous resistance to the violence of the Italian authorities date back to the period between 1918 and 1920 and consisted mainly of the expression of ‘Slavic’ sentiments, various demonstrations, anti-Italian propaganda, and informing Yugoslavia about the situation in the area. In the pre-election period, the fascist squads attacked and destroyed everything that seemed hostile to them. On the day of the national elections on 15 May 1921 throughout the region incidents occurred, trying to turn the result in their favour by force. In particular, the Socialists and Communists were under attack in all of Italy. In Slovenian Istria, the best-known response to the violence is the local revolt in Marezige. A group of 11 fascists arrived in the village in the morning and immediately started provoking and forcing voters to vote for Blocco Nazionale. When the fascists started to shoot, the locals reacted spontaneously, attacking the fascists first with stones, and the fascists responded with shots. The outraged people killed three and seriously wounded one man. From Koper the available force of carabinieri and soldiers were sent, joined by fascists and three republicans. The latter immediately resorted to violence, but the soldiers and carabinieri soon restored order. However, in the marches that followed, the fascist squads took revenge on the nearby village of Čežarji. The Marezige uprising culminated in a highly publicised trial in Trieste. The fascists were acquitted based on the amnesty decree, which did not apply to the Slovenians. Those affected by the fascists’ rampage have never been compensated nor were they held responsible for their actions.
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Lush, Alexander. "Remaining Virtuous in a Climate of Decadence: Delivery of Efficient and Practical Buildings in the Context of a Novelty-Minded Market." In 7th International Conference on Tall Buildings. Singapore: Research Publishing Services, 2009. http://dx.doi.org/10.3850/9789628014194_0088.
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Tomassoni, Rosella, Valentina Coccarelli, and Francesco Spilabotte. "THE CRISIS OF THE EGO IN THE PAINTINGS AND DRAWINGS OF GIAN CARLO RICCARDI: BRIEF PSYCHOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS." In 10th SWS International Scientific Conferences on ART and HUMANITIES - ISCAH 2023. SGEM WORLD SCIENCE, 2023. http://dx.doi.org/10.35603/sws.iscah.2023/vs08.10.
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The main purpose of this study is to analyse and examine some of the paintings of the Italian avant-garde artist Gian Carlo Riccardi. Our work will focus in particular on a psychological study of the paintings and drawings realised by the artist. Our study basically focuses on the compositions created between the 1980s and 1990s and the graphic works executed in the 2000s. The first category examines certain works characterised by intense abstractionism. The pictorial material used by Gian Carlo Riccardi is manipulated, contaminated and destroyed, leaving only �relics�, symbolising a crisis of the ego. The second category analyses the drawings that make up the �Bestiary� collection. Gian Carlo Riccardi imprints on the blank sheets, the deformity and physical and moral decadence of the humanity represented, a bestiary humanity. This research aims to show how, through the works examined, Gian Carlo Riccardi synthesises individual and collective anguish through heterogeneous pictorial interventions, within which the gesture lacerates and lays bare the underlying �cutaneous� tissue, and illustrations where the sign traces the outlines of naked bodies revealing the scabrous reality of the commodification of flesh.