Oxford Handbook of Decadence

The meaning of decadence varies with context, depending on what (or who) is understood to have declined, decayed, or degenerated. These negative meanings are familiar from history (the decline and fall of Rome), sociology (the decay of communities), morality (the degeneration of values), and more, including such popular conceptions of decadence as excess and corruption. At the same time, all of this negative decadence has found positive cultural expression, principally in literature, through the work of such celebrated nineteenth-century decadents as Charles Baudelaire, Oscar Wilde, and many others. This volume takes the study of decadence beyond these canonical literary works to explore the phenomenon in broader historical, geographical, and cultural contexts. In thirty-five chapters by esteemed scholars from a range of disciplines, the Oxford Handbook of Decadence addresses different critical periods, such as classical antiquity, various ages of empire, the interwar era in the twentieth century, and contemporary times, as well as key places--France, Belgium, Britain, Italy, Germany, the Nordic nations, Russia and Ukraine, the Ottoman Empire, and Japan--and such genres as the novel, the short story, drama, the essay, prose poetry, and film. The volume also considers decadence more broadly as a culture not limited to literature by tracing its manifestations in such material forms as book design, fashion, interior decoration, and architecture, as well as through the experiential register of the senses: decadent vision, sound, smell, taste, and touch are all reflected, respectively, in painting, music, perfume, cuisine, and feeling. Finally, the chapters explore the theoretical resonance of decadence in such fields as theology, science, ecology, politics, psychoanalysis, and philosophy. By illuminating the various ways decadence can be construed, the Handbook offers an in-depth and original exploration into the paradox of decadence: a culture that draws its creative energy from the idea of decline.

Jane Desmarais is Professor of English and Director of the Decadence Research Centre at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research is primarily focused on nineteenth-century literature and visual culture, specifically literary and visual decadence, and Anglo-French cultural relations at the fin de siècle. Her publications include Decadence and Literature, co-edited with David Weir (2019), Monsters Under Glass: A Cultural History of Hothouse Flowers from 1850 to the Present (2018), Arthur Symons: Selected Early Poems, co-edited with Chris Baldick (2017), and Decadence and the Senses, co-edited with Alice Condé (2017). David Weir is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at Cooper Union in New York City. He is the author of ten books, including three on the topic of decadence: Decadence and the Making of Modernism (1995), Decadent Culture in the United States (2009), and Decadence: A Very Short Introduction (2018). He has also written the "Decadence" entry for the second edition of The Oxford Encyclopedia of Aesthetics (2014) and edited, with Jane Desmarais, Decadence and Literature (2019).