Decadence: The Strange Life of an Epithet

by Richard Gilman

What exactly did and does this pervasive word, decadence, mean? For several centuries at least, it was used to characterize conditions if decline; most notably, the corruption, probably Oriental in origin, that ostensibly led to the fall of the Roman Empire. Associated with it were flabbiness, luxury, sensuality, a loss of nerve and skill - and, contradictory, excessive concern with formal perfection at the expense of content. But it is only a little over a hundred years ago that the first person (Baudelaire) was called (by Gautier) decadent. It was in mid-nineteenth-century France, in the reaction to the triumph of the idea of progress and its associated bourgeois smugness and optimism, that decadence, as a posture proudly denying normal ethical and aesthetic standards, came to the fore. Soon it reached the England of Swinburne, Wilde, and Beardsley and eventually came to be attached to such disparate phenomena as the Wiemar Republic and Nazism, l'art pour l'art and punk rock. Richard Gilman, one of our most respected critics, here undertakes to demonstrate that this ubiquitous word may be nothing but a vessel of ambiguity and imprecision, a freelance epithet, as he calls it. The result is not only a fascinating linguistic exploration but also a study in permutations of belief, a first-rate piece of literary criticism, and an illuminating essay in cultural history.

Genres: Literary Criticism, Nonfiction, Language, Criticism

180 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

For the Canadian former RAF pilot, see Richard Gilman.

American professor and drama critic.

Reviews

[Carla Remy]

This is a beautiful book, beautifully written. I found it at a thrift store, this cover, but faded. And whoever had it before did not read it. Nor am I going to, though I tell you, I loved it.

[Kallie]

This is a brilliantly written cultural/literary work about how culture can change the meaning of a word, and hang upon the sense of that word all its own vague, meaningless biases. Gilman offers a lot of insight into the culture and inspiration of French and Victorian England writers deemed decadent by Victorian and post-Victorian society (basically anyone who challenged stuffy hypocrisy), but does not fail to acknowledge that a lot of poseurs rode on 'decadent' coattails. Finally, he deftly argues against the tendency to equate artistic value with reflection of current social prejudices rather than viewing artistic work on its own merit.

While reading, I was reminded of how neo-conservative tea party fanatics set out to make 'liberal' an epithet, and certainly succeeded in far too many people's fuzzy minds.

Just one of my favorite observations: "The world of cliches contains only answers."