Title Decadent conservatism : aesthetics, politics, and the past / Alex Murray

Published Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2023

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Description 1 online resource (264 p.) Contents Intro -- Title page -- Copyright page -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Introduction: Conservatism and the Experience of Decadence -- Decadence and Politics -- Fin-de-Siècle Conservatism -- The Conservative Tradition -- Two Modes of Decadent Experience -- Experience as Sensation -- Conservative Experience -- Personnel and Precis -- 1. Alternative Communities: Decadent-Conservative Little Magazines -- Facing into The Whirlwind -- Introducing The Senate -- Verlaine, 'bright troubadour of France' -- May 1895: The View from The Senate -- Conservative Decadents in the Twentieth Century -- 2. The Politics of Fin-de-Siècle Individualism -- Individualism at the Fin de Siècle -- Balfour the Aesthete -- Wildean Individualism -- Balfour's Aesthetic Individualism -- Useless Aesthetics -- Balfour and Decadence -- 3. Throne-and-Altar Decadence -- Decadence, Sovereignty, and Religion -- Decadent Medievalism -- The Decadent Civil War -- The Restoration of Decadence -- Decadent Loyalty -- The Death of Queen Victoria -- 4. Folk Decadence -- Decadence, Science, Romanticism -- Folklore against Modernity: W. B. Yeats and Fiona Macleod -- Arthur Machen's Weird Folk Decadence -- Quotidian Wonder -- 5. Decadence, Imperialism, and Jingoism -- Decadence and Empire -- Aesthetic Elegy, Decadent Doggerel, and the Imperial Superman -- 'the Yellow Book in court dress and bedroom slippers': The Anglo-Saxon Review -- 'Patriotism and art mix as little as oil and water': Aestheticizing Anglo-Saxonism -- Art for Empire's Sake -- Coda: Symons and The Superwomen -- Bibliography -- Index Summary Decadent Conservatism argues that both literary Decadence and political conservatism in Britain at the turn of the twentieth century was driven by a common drive to find alternatives to liberal modernity. Thematic chapters offer a new, and much messier, picture of fin-de-siècle literary politics British Decadent literature was a radical attack on conventional morality and middle-class taste, its insistence on the autonomy of the art and its exploration of sexuality, dissipation, and depravity at odds with the literary and social establishment. Yet this countercultural narrative has obscured the often reactionary, elitist, and nostalgic tendencies of Decadent writers and artists of the fin de siècle. This book offers the first in-depth examination of the intersection of Decadence and conservatism, arguing that underpinning both was the desire to find alternatives to liberal modernity. Both Decadents and conservatism turned to the past to uncover values and models of social organization that could offer stability in a chaotic world. From well-known figures such as Oscar Wilde and W. B. Yeats to the forgotten editors of short-lived periodicals, important female aesthetes such as Michael Field, and politicians such as Arthur Balfour, the book challenges conventional understandings of the relationship between aesthetics, politics, and the past in late Victorian Britain. Through a series of thematic chapters exploring the alternative communities created by little magazines, the politics of individualism, investments in monarchy and religion, folk Decadence, and jingoistic and nationalist responses to the Second Anglo-Boer War, this study offers a new and much messier picture of fin-de-si,ecle literary politics. It will be of interest to those working on Victorian literature and modernism, as well as the social, political and cultural history of the period 1880-1920 Notes Description based upon print version of record Subject Decadence (Literary movement) -- Great Britain English literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism English literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism Literature and society -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century Literature and society -- Great Britain -- History -- 20th century Politics and literature -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century Politics and literature -- Great Britain -- History -- 20th century Decadence (Literary movement) English literature Literature and society Politics and literature Literature: history & criticism. Literature. Great Britain Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc. History Form Electronic book ISBN 0192673963 9780191949050 0191949051 9780192673961

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