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When Oscar Wilde was convicted of gross indecency in 1895, a reporter for the National Observer wrote that there was "not a man or a woman in the English-speaking world possessed of the treasure of a wholesome mind who is not under a deep debt of gratitude to the marquis of Queensberry for destroying the high Priest of the Decadents." But reports of the death of decadence were greatly exaggerated, and today, more than one hundred years after the famous trial and at the beginning of a new millennium, the phenomenon of decadence continues to be a significant cultural force.

Indeed, "decadence" in the nineteenth century, and in our own period, has been a concept whose analysis yields a broad set of associations. In Perennial Decay, Emily Apter, Charles Bernheimer, Sylvia Molloy, Michael Riffaterre, Barbara Spackman, Marc Weiner, and others extend the critical field of decadence beyond the traditional themes of morbidity, the cult of artificiality, exoticism, and sexual nonconformism. They approach the question of decadence afresh, reevaluating the continuing importance of late nineteenth-century decadence for contemporary literary and cultural studies.

Table of Contents

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  1. Cover
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  1. Title Page, Copyright
  2. pp. i-iv
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  1. Contents
  2. pp. v-vi
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  1. Introduction
  2. pp. 1-32
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  1. Defining Decadence
  1. 1. Interversions
  2. Barbara Spackman
  3. pp. 35-49
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  1. 2. Unknowing Decadence
  2. Charles Bernheimer
  3. pp. 50-64
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  1. 3. Decadent Paradoxes
  2. Michael Riffaterre
  3. pp. 65-80
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  1. Visualizing Decadence
  1. 4. Posing a Threat: Queensberry, Wilde, and the Portrayal of Decadence
  2. Dennis Denisoff
  3. pp. 83-100
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  1. 5. Decadent Critique: Constructing "History" in Peter Greenaway's The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover
  2. David Wayne Thomas
  3. pp. 101-118
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  1. 6. Opera and the Discourse of Decadence: From Wagner to AIDS
  2. Marc A. Weiner
  3. pp. 119-141
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  1. 7. Spaces of the Demimonde / Subcultures of Decadence: 1890–1990
  2. Emily Apter
  3. pp. 142-156
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  1. Identifications of Decadence and Decadent Identities
  1. 8. "Comment Peut-on Être Homosexuel?": Multinational (In) Corporation and the Frenchness of Salomé
  2. Melanie C. Hawthorne
  3. pp. 159-182
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  1. 9. The Politics of Posing: Translating Decadence in Fin-de-Siècle Latin America
  2. Sylvia Molloy
  3. pp. 183-197
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  1. 10. Improper Names: Pseudonyms and Transvestites in Decadent Prose
  2. Leonard R. Koos
  3. pp. 198-214
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  1. 11. Imperial Dependency, Addiction, and the Decadent Body
  2. Hema Chari
  3. pp. 215-232
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  1. Decadence, History, and the Politics of Language
  1. 12. Pale Imitations: Walter Pater's Decadent Historiography
  2. Matthew Potolsky
  3. pp. 235-253
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  1. 13. "Golden Mediocrity": Pater's Marcus Aurelius and the Making of Decadence
  2. Sharon Bassett
  3. pp. 254-267
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  1. 14. Fetishizing Writing: The Politics of Fictional Form in the Work of Remy de Gourmont and Joséphin Péladan
  2. Jennifer Birkett
  3. pp. 268-288
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  1. 15. "Ce Bazar Intellectuel": Maurice Barrès, Decadent Masters, and Nationalist Pupils
  2. Liz Constable
  3. pp. 289-308
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  1. List of Contributors
  2. pp. 309-310
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  1. Index
  2. pp. 311-318
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