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Chapter 20 - Decadence and Modernism

from Part III - Applications

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 August 2019

By
Gerald Gillespie
Edited by
Jane Desmarais  and
David Weir
Jane Desmarais
Affiliation:
Goldsmiths, University of London
David Weir
Affiliation:
The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art
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Summary

The centrality of decadence to the development of modernism is clear in the work of the major modernist figures James Joyce, Marcel Proust, and Thomas Mann. Joyce expatiates on decadent traits with such encyclopaedic abandon in the ‘Circe’ chapter of Ulysses that they finally evince something absurd and mysterious in human nature, whereas in In Search of Lost Time Proust more tightly aligns decadent traits with the burden of personal character and societal malaise. Mann, in underscoring both medical and metaphysical aspects of decadence, links with Joyce and Proust at many points. These prominent modernists reflect awareness of two basic polarities that first emerged in the decadent era of the fin de siècle: on the one side, concern over disintegrative forces in the modern world and realization of the need to take spiritual and aesthetic shelter; and, on the other, a sense of the aesthetic imperative to harvest the gains which the opportunity of such a moment presented.

Keywords

decadencemodernismGillespieJoyceProustMannmodernistsaestheticsmetaphysicalmalaise
Type
Chapter
Information
Decadence and Literature , pp. 332 - 346
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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References

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