Schoolfield, George C

New Haven and London. 2003. Yale University Press. 1st American Ediion. Very Good in Dustjacket. 0300047142. 415 pages. hardcover. . keywords: Literature Literary Criticism Decadence. FROM THE PUBLISHER - During the final decades of the nineteenth century, a common mind-set emerged among many intellectuals - ‘la decadence.' A feeling that the century was ending in exhaustion and decay gripped writers as diverse as Joris-Karl Huysmans, Gabriele D'Annunzio, August Strindberg, Halldor Kiljan Laxness, Bram Stoker, and Thomas Mann. Their novels and novellas were populated with protagonists who were fragile, refined, self-absorbed, and preoccupied with a trivially exquisite aesthetic. A BAEDEKER OF DECADENCE presents an international collection of thirty-two works of literary decadence written between 1884 and 1927. George C. Schoolfield, a world authority on the decadent novel, offers an entertaining and wide-ranging commentary on the many strands of this highly significant literary and cultural phenomenon. Schoolfield tracks down the symptoms of decadence in narrative works across Europe, Scandinavia, the British Isles, Australia, and the United States. He discusses works that were written in more than a dozen languages, providing synopses and passages in English translation to give a sense of each author's style and tone. A few of the novels he analyzes are well known, such as Oscar Wilde's PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, but others are obscure while some have never been translated into English. Through close readings of these diverse turn-of-the-century writers, Schoolfield throws new light on their close intellectual kinship and on the ingredients, themes, motifs, and preconceptions that characterized decadent literature. inventory #22353 ISBN: 0300047142.