Decadences: Morality and Aesthetics in British Literature

This volume follows shifting conceptions of decadence in art and society at various moments in British literature. The decline from a higher standard, social malaise, aesthetic ennui—all of these ideas presume certain facts about the past, the present, and time's linear nature. To reject the past as a given and to relish the subtleties of present nuance is the beginning of decadence. This study explores the inherent conflict between society's moral contempt toward purportedly decadent artists and the artist's belief that the stranglehold society maintained on individual interpretation was true decadence.