{"product_id":"the-decadent-reader-fiction-fantasy-and-perversion-from-fin-de-si鐵le-france-paperback","title":"The Decadent Reader: Fiction, Fantasy, and Perversion from Fin-De-Si鐵le France - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eAsti Hustvedt\u003c\/b\u003e (Editor)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn fin-de-si cle France, progress and material prosperity coincided with widespread alarm about disease and decay. The obsessions of our own culture at the end of the millennium resonated in a striking manner with those of the last fin de si cle: crime, pollution, sexually transmitted disease, gender confusion, moral depravity, alcoholism, and tobacco and drug use were topics of constant popular discussion in both epochs. \u003ci\u003eThe Decadent Reader\u003c\/i\u003e is a collection of novels and stories from fin-de-si cle France that celebrate decline, aestheticize decay, and take pleasure in perversity. By embracing the marginal, the unhealthy, and the deviant, these writers attacked bourgeois life, which they perceived as the chief enemy of art. Barbey d'Aurevilly, J.K. Huysmans, Jean Lorrain, Guy de Maupassant, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Catulle Mend s, Rachilde, Jean Mor as, Octave Mirbeau, Jos phin Peladan, and Remy de Gourmont looted the riches of their culture for their own purposes. From an age of medicine they borrowed its occult mysteries rather than its positivism. In its social Darwinism, they found their monsters: sadists, murderers, transvestites, fetishists, prostitutes, nymphomaniacs, and hysterics. And they reveled in them, completely upending the conventions of romance and sentimentality. \u003ci\u003eThe Decadent Reader\u003c\/i\u003e, which includes novels and stories that have never before appeared in English, as well as reappraisals of work that the reader may already be familiar with, offers a compelling portrait of fin-de-si cle France.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 1096\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 1.4 x 8 x 5.4 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e November 01, 1998\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Books by splitShops","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51770056868128,"sku":"9781890951078","price":42.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0974\/9764\/5344\/files\/5c6878c49c58c0e88a29995720fce0be.webp?v=1780363477","url":"https:\/\/ebocreations.com\/products\/the-decadent-reader-fiction-fantasy-and-perversion-from-fin-de-si%e9%90%b5le-france-paperback","provider":"The E-Book Oasis LLC","version":"1.0","type":"link"}