This module is not currently running in 2024 to 2025.
The module explores the development of decadence in late nineteenth-century Europe as an artistic response, a philosophic expression and a social critique. Taking the work of Charles Baudelaire and the failed revolutions of 1848 as its starting-points, the module examines decadence as both a symptom of political and artistic frustration and as a psychological investigation of what Max Weber would later term ‘the disenchantment of the world’. Key themes will include the role of the artist, nature versus artifice, fantasy and desire, sexuality, social morality versus personal freedom, and death. The module will not only explore decadence in terms of different literary genres (fiction, drama, poetry) but also in the visual arts of the period.
2 hours per week
100% coursework
Indicative Reading List -
Knut Hamsun, Hunger, trans. Sverre Lyngstad (Canongate, 2006)
Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against Nature, trans. Robert Baldick, ed. Patrick McGuinness (Penguin, 2003)
Frank Wedekind, Lulu, trans. Wes Williams, ed. Nicholas Wright (Nick Hern Books, 2001)
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ed. Isobel Murray (Oxford World's Classics, 1994)
See the library reading list for this module (Canterbury)
By the end of the module students will be able to:
1. identify significant examples of decadent art and literature from late nineteenth-century Europe
2. demonstrate a coherent and detailed knowledge of literary and artistic decadence as an intellectual movement as well placing the moment within an historical context
3. critically assess different versions of decadence in the work of European artists and writers
4. critically evaluate decadence in terms of the Romantic legacy and the beginnings of Modernism
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