Language and Decadence in the Victorian Fin de Siecle (Princeton Legacy Library) - Softcover

Dowling, Linda C.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0691014728 ISBN 13: 9780691014722

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 1989

Synopsis

As Dr. Dowling demonstrates, literary Decadence in this linguistic and cultural context was to reveal itself as a mode of Romanticism demoralized by philology. Decadent writers like Paler and Wilde and Beardslcy sought to preserve a few precious fragments from what they imagined--and paradoxically welcomed--as England's imminent decline and fall.

Originally published in 1987.

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About this title

Review

"Linda Dowling has taken an unusual but stimulating approach to the whole subject of Decadence in English literature. She succeeds in divorcing Decadence from its sensational connotations, and identifies the term instead with a coherent attitude toward language."---John R. Reed, Nineteenth Century Literature

"[Dowling] has . . . written an essential book. . . . No one henceforth will be able to write about literary decadence or Pater's role therein without taking into account Dowling's explanations. More, her book should do much to bring about an awareness of a chapter of linguistic history too little regarded by literary criticism."---Wendell V. Harris, English Literature in Transition

"This is an important book with a fascinating thesis. It could be written only by someone with Professor Dowling's evident command of German and English philology."---Robert O. Preyer, Journal of English and Germanic Philology

"Dowling produces a dazzling series of rereadings. . . . [Her] book is essential reading for anyone wanting to follow debates about decadence."---Bruce Gardiner, Victorian Studies

"Language and Decadence is going to change the way we look at the final decades of English Victorianism, and for that matter at the whole of Victorian literature."---Robert Keefe, Kritikon Litterarum

From Library Journal

Dowling contends that late 19th-century literary Decadence "emerged from a . . . crisis in Victorian attitudes towards language brought about by the new comparative philology earlier imported from the Continent." "The literary tongue of the great English writers" having become "simply another dead language," writers like Pater, Swinburne, Wilde, and the young Yeats were left shoring the fragments of language against their ruins. This work is sophisticated and carefully argued, even if it finally seems to claim too much for the history of philology. It helps that Dowling offers illuminating interpretations of various literary Decadents, without overrating them. An original, thought-provoking work of cultural and literary criticism. Keith Cushman, English Dept., Univ. of North Carolina, Greensboro
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 0691014728
• ISBN 13: 9780691014722
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 314