Decadence, Degeneration, and the End: Studies in the European Fin de Siècle

Front Matter....Pages i-xi
Introduction....Pages 1-14
Front Matter....Pages 15-15
Thermal Degeneration: Thermodynamics and the Heat-Death of the Universe in Victorian Science, Philosophy, and Culture....Pages 17-34
A Regenerative Decadence or a Decadent Regeneration: Challenges to Darwinian Determinism by French, Spanish, and Latin American Writers in the Fin de Siècle....Pages 35-47
Late Antiquity as an Expression of Decadence in the Poetry of Constantine P. Cavafy and Stefan George....Pages 49-65
Decadence and Regeneration: Oscar Wilde’s Fairy Tales as a Tool for Social Change....Pages 67-82
Front Matter....Pages 83-83
Decadent Tropologies of Sickness....Pages 85-102
Consuming and Consumed: Woman as Habituée in Eugène Grasset’s Morphinomaniac ....Pages 103-123
Decadence, Melancholia, and the Making of Modernism in the Salome Fairy Tales of Strindberg, Wilde, and Ibsen....Pages 125-141
Front Matter....Pages 143-143
Mariia Iakunchikova and the Roots of Decadence in Late-Nineteenth-Century Russian Modernism....Pages 145-163
The Spectral Salome: Salomania and Fin-de-Siècle Sexology and Racial Theory....Pages 165-181
“For the Strong-Minded Alone”: Evolution, Female Atavism, and Degeneration in Aubrey Beardsley’s Salomé....Pages 183-200
Front Matter....Pages 201-201
Death at Sea: Symbolism and Charles Cottet’s Subjective Realism....Pages 203-223
The Seduction of Thanatos: Gabriele D’Annunzio and the Decadent Death....Pages 225-243
Back Matter....Pages 245-282