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Literary Criticism French

The Idea of Decadence in French Literature, 1830-1900

by (author) A.E. Carter

Publisher
University of Toronto Press
Initial publish date
Dec 1978
Category
French, 19th Century, Books & Reading, France
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781442654464
    Publish Date
    Dec 1978
    List Price
    $25.95

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Description

The cult of decadence is usually dismissed as an eccentricity of French literature, a final twitter of Romantic neurosis, convulsing the lunatic fringe of letters during the last third of the nineteenth century. However, the nineteenth century's preoccupation with decadence provides us with a key to the secret places of its thought, to all the obscure passages and backstairs behind the triumphant façade. Between 1814 and 1914, there was no sense of disaster, no tragic sense. Civilization had become a habit, a side product of political constitutions and applied science. History was viewed pragmatically: of what use were such traditional symbols as throne and altar? Both are essentially propitiatory, evidence of man's uneasy knowledge that power is dangerous and destiny implacable. And both seemed anachronisms in a world where (it was thought) human reason had solved or would solve all the old problems. The theory of decadence is very largely a protest against this comfortable belief. Had the decadents not written, we should hardly suspect that the nineteenth century suffered from the same doubts and hesitations as all other ages, before and since.

About the author

A.E. Carter taught in various Canadian universities and from 1964 till his retirement he was a professor of French Literature at the University of Georgia.

A.E. Carter's profile page