The Decadent Reader

1998-11 Literary Collections

Author : Asti Hustvedt
Release : 1998-11
Genre : Literary Collections
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : /5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Decadent Reader by : Asti Hustvedt

Download or read book The Decadent Reader written by Asti Hustvedt. This book was released on 1998-11. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of stories and novels from fin-de-si cle France that celebrate decline, decay, and deviance.In France at the end of the nineteenth century, progress and material prosperity coincided with widespread alarm about disease and decay. The obsessions of our own culture as the twentieth century came to a close resonate strikingly with those of the last fin-de-si cle: crime, pollution, sexually transmitted diseases, gender confusion, moral depravity, alcoholism, and tobacco and drug use were topics of popular discussion then as now.The Decadent Reader is a collection of novels and stories from fin-de-si cle France that celebrate decline, aestheticize decay, and take pleasure in perversity. By embracing the marginal, the unhealthy, and the deviant, the decadent writers attacked bourgeois life, which they perceived to be the chief enemy of art. Barbey d'Aurevilly, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Jean Lorrain, Guy de Maupassant, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Catulle Mend s, Rachilde, Jean Mor as, Octave Mirbeau, Jos phin P ladan, and Remy de Gourmont looted the riches of their culture for their own purposes. In an age of medicine, they borrowed its occult mysteries rather than its positivism. From its social Darwinism, they found their monsters: sadists, murderers, transvestites, fetishists, prostitutes, nymphomaniacs, and hysterics. And they reveled in them, completely upending the conventions of romance and sentimentality. The Decadent Reader, which includes critical essays on all of the authors, many novels and stories that have never before appeared in English, and familiar works set in a new context, offers a compelling portrait of fin-de-si cle France.

The Decadent Society

2021-03-16 Political Science

Author : Ross Douthat
Release : 2021-03-16
Genre : Political Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 252/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Decadent Society by : Ross Douthat

Download or read book The Decadent Society written by Ross Douthat. This book was released on 2021-03-16. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times columnist and bestselling author of Bad Religion, a “clever and stimulating” (The New York Times Book Review) portrait of how our turbulent age is defined by dark forces seemingly beyond our control. The era of the coronavirus has tested America, and our leaders and institutions have conspicuously failed. That failure shouldn’t be surprising: Beneath social-media frenzy and reality-television politics, our era’s deep truths are elite incompetence, cultural exhaustion, and the flight from reality into fantasy. Casting a cold eye on these trends, The Decadent Society explains what happens when a powerful society ceases advancing—how the combination of wealth and technological proficiency with economic stagnation, political stalemate, and demographic decline creates a unique civilizational crisis. Ranging from the futility of our ideological debates to the repetitions of our pop culture, from the decline of sex and childbearing to the escapism of drug use, Ross Douthat argues that our age is defined by disappointment—by the feeling that all the frontiers are closed, that the paths forward lead only to the grave. Correcting both optimism and despair, Douthat provides an enlightening explanation of how we got here, how long our frustrations might last, and how, in renaissance or catastrophe, our decadence might ultimately end.

French Decadent Tales

2013-05-09 Fiction

Author : Stephen Romer
Release : 2013-05-09
Genre : Fiction
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 818/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis French Decadent Tales by : Stephen Romer

Download or read book French Decadent Tales written by Stephen Romer. This book was released on 2013-05-09. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'He had become the dandy of the unpredictable.' A quest for new sensations, and an avowed desire to shock possessed the Decadent writers of fin-de-siècle Paris. The years 1880-1900 saw an extraordinary, hothouse flowering of talent, that produced some of the most exotic, stylized, and cerebral literature in the French language. While 'Decadence' was a European movement, its epicentre was the French capital. On the eve of Freud's early discoveries, writers such as Gourmont, Lorrain, Maupassant, Mirbeau, Richepin, Schwob, and Villiers engaged in a species of wild analysis of their own, perfecting the art of short fiction as they did so. Death and Eros haunt these pages, and a polymorphous perversity by turns hilarious and horrifying. Their stories teem with addicts, maniacs, and murderers as they strive to outdo each other. This newly translated selection brings together the very best writing of the period, from lesser known figures as well as famous names. Provocative and unsettling, these extraordinary, corrosive little tales continue to cast a cold eye on the modern world. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

The Decadent Gardener

1996 Gardening

Author : Medlar Lucan
Release : 1996
Genre : Gardening
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 822/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Decadent Gardener by : Medlar Lucan

Download or read book The Decadent Gardener written by Medlar Lucan. This book was released on 1996. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book looks at the role in gardening played by torture, eroticism, blasphemy, the grotesque, narcotics, the artificial, and many other subjects dear to the decadent's heart.

Decadence

2014-04 Fiction

Author : Eric Jerome Dickey
Release : 2014-04
Genre : Fiction
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 527/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Decadence by : Eric Jerome Dickey

Download or read book Decadence written by Eric Jerome Dickey. This book was released on 2014-04. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "What Nia Simone Bijou desires, she works hard to achieve. Her accomplishments as a respected writer have not only brought her to Hollywood, but she's now poised for worldwide success, and pursued and desired by Prada, a man of international power and wealth. With everything Nia has, she remains restless and on a journey to quell her inner storm. Then someone introduces her to a place called Decadence ..."--Page [4] cover.

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