States of Decadence is a two volume anthology that focuses on the literary and cultural phenomenon of decadence. Particular attention is given to literature from the end of the 1800s, the fin de siècle: however, the essays presented here are not restricted to this historical period, but draw lines both back in time and forward to our day to illuminate the contradictory multiplicity inherent in decadence. Furthermore, the essays go beyond literary studies, drawing on a number of the tropes and themes of decadence manifested in the arts and culture, such as in music, opera, film, history, and even jewelry design. Volume 2 comprises essays on the following thematic areas: “Images of Decadent Women”, “Transmedia Decadence”, “Contemporary Decadence”, and “Poetic Decadence”. The contributors are part of an active network of international scholars from many different countries. As the expansive title of the volume suggests, they explore the decadent aesthetic approach to the arts, to culture, and to a worldview that juxtaposes a strange mixture of conservatism and rebellion, ambivalence and deep conviction.
Contributors are:
Guri E. Barstad and Karen P. Knutsen. Introduction: Forty Shades of Decadence
Images of Decadent Women
- Britt W. Svenhard: Decadence Revisited in Michael Winterbottom’s Jude
- Vesna Elez: La fame fatale et la fatalité: le crépuscule des dieux dans Salammbô de Flaubert?
- Maïa Varsimashvili-Raphael: Salomé–le mythe symboliste
- Michaela Gardini: Les décadents et les femmes mystiques
- Elizabeth Emery: Une Morte vivante: Reliquarianism in Rachilde’s ‘La Dent’
- Marie-Gersande Raoult: Féminité(s) iconoclaste(s) chez Catulle Mendès et Rachilde: du saphisme à la construction d’un sexe amazon
Transmedia Decadence
- Timothée Picard: Musique et décadence
- Yvonne Ivory: Decadence in Modernist Vienna: Alexander Zemlinsky’s Eine florentinische Tragödie
- Anne-Marie Le Baillif: Le recours à l’illusion, un marqueur de la chute
- Florence Cheron: Décadence de la Décadence
- Emeline Chauvet: Décadence et postmodernité: le choix du motif pornographique
- Cyril Barde: Les bijoux de Lalique: entre Art Noveau et Décadence littéraire
Contemporary Decadence
- Robert Mikkelsen: From Frankenstein to Villa Straylight: The Decadent in Science Fiction
- Ludivine Fustin: Michel Houellebecq: Un décadent au XXIe siècle
- Xavier Escudero: D’une décadence hispanique à une autre: excentricité et marge(s) dans la prose narrative contemporaine espagnole
Poetic Decadence
- Aurélie Briquet: ‘L’Aquarium’ de Jules Laforgue: les avatars d’un poème en prose
- Olfa Abrougui: Sentiment de décadence a l’automne de la renaissance
- Wassim Seddik: La sensibilité décadente de José-Maria de Heredia à travers ‘Sphinx’
- Vincent Zonca: Des poétiques de la ‘décadence’ à la fin du XXème siècle? Luis Antonio de Villena et Guy Debord: entre avant-gardes et postmodernités