Rue des Beaux-Arts n°70 – Janvier/Février/Mars 2020
endings of Decadent texts, Decadent events, Decadent careers,
Decadent lives, or Decadent civilizations? What is or was modern or
modernist about Decadent conclusions?
Late Style: Formal considerations of style when time has run out:
Baudelaire or Verlaine or Huysmans on the style d'or at the end of
empires, the crepuscular Debussy, late James, Wilde after the trials,
Aschenbach at the beach, Don Fabrizio at the ball, time regained in
Proust, final cigarettes in film noir, Djuna Barnes or Jean Rhys or
Lawrence Durrell or Tennessee Williams or Thomas Pynchon or Martin
Amis after the lover has left in a taxi, you see where this is going.
What is Neo-Decadence? A paradox, for starters, but what exactly are
the aesthetic forms of Decadence in the present siècle? How do they
evoke the styles, themes, and ironies of the Decadent Movement of the
19th century? Why this return, why this departure? Why is J.-K.
Huysmans turning up in novels by Michel Houellebecq and D. B. C.
Pierre?
Why are there new movies or plays about Colette, Sarah
Bernhardt, Oscar Wilde? What is Neo and Decadent about Drowning
in Beauty: The Neo-Decadent Anthology?
PANELS: Proposals for talks (15 mins.), panels (3 talks), by March 1,
2020. Please send an abstract of about 250 words (and any queries) to
Ellis Hanson at [email protected]
SEMINARS: There will be a Keynote Lecture, but also a series of
Keynote Seminars, open discussions on a Decadent text, each led by a
distinguished critic in the field who has been invited to choose and
introduce an important text. Seminar topics will be announced soon.
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