106-060 Decadence

Usually 25 points of first year English, see Prerequisites, or first year European studies, see Prerequisites.

This subject examines decadence as an historical, textual, sexual and cultural category, focusing on late 19th and early 20th century literary production in terms of recent theoretical perspectives. Topics include interrelations between European and English varieties of literary decadence and aestheticism; the invention of 'lifestyle' and life-as-art; rhetorics of artistic production as excess and artifice; theories of entropy and degeneration, and transgressive sexualities. Students who complete this subject successfully should have acquired a first-hand acquaintance with some representative examples of decadent writing, an understanding of the controversies provoked by its original publication and also of the parodic reproductions and later reconsiderations of it.

Class participation, and written work totalling 4000 words.

A subject reader including Renee Vivien's A Woman Appeared to Me will be available from the department.

• J-K Huysmans, A Rebours (Against Nature). OUP.
• H James, The Spoils of Poynton. Penguin.
• T Mann, Death in Venice. Penguin.
• Sacher-Masoch, Venus in Furs. Blast.
• H G Wells, The Time Machine. Heinemann.
• O Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Penguin.