The Decadent Reader: Fiction, Fantasy, and Perversion from Fin-de-Siècle France
The end of the 20th century has renewed an interest in the end of the 19th century, in particular the aesthetes and fin-de-siecle writers of France who influenced writers like Oscar Wilde and pointed toward modernists such as James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and T.S. Eliot. Coined by Baudelaire to describe Edgar Allan Poe, Decadence represented an aesthetic/aristocratic attack on bourgeois culture, exploring themes of art, deviance, perversion, and marginalization. Editor Hustvedt has collected translations of 12 short novels or selections by Barbey d'Aurevilly, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, Remy de Gourmont, and six others. Each selection includes an introduction by the translator. Hustvedt has performed a valuable service by providing this rich assortment of materials not otherwise readily available. Recommended for public and academic libraries.?T.L. Cooksey, Armstrong Atlantic State Univ., Savannah,Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.