Table of Contents

Introduction. "Workers of the Final Hour"
Chapter 1. "Partisans Inconnus": Aesthetic Community and the Public Good in Baudelaire
Chapter 2. The Politics of Appreciation: Gautier and Swinburne on Baudelaire
Chapter 3. Golden Books: Pater, Huysmans, and Decadent Canonization
Chapter 4. A Mirror for Teachers: Decadent Pedagogy and Public Education
Chapter 5. A Republic of (Nothing but) Letters: Some Versions of Decadent Community
Postscript. Public Works: Stéphane Mallarmé's "Le Tombeau de Charles Baudelaire"
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments

Promotional Information

The Decadent Republic of Letters revises the longstanding view of decadence as a movement defined by escapism and sociopolitical withdrawal. The book argues that decadent writers and artists from Charles Baudelaire to Aubrey Beardsley addressed a cosmopolitan audience united by taste rather than language, geography, or national identity.

About the Author

Matthew Potolsky is Associate Professor of English at the University of Utah.

Reviews

"A new understanding, full of fresh detail and local insight, and it will take an important and indeed essential place in the growing body of scholarly work in this field. . . . A welcome contribution to the understanding of the cultural politics of late nineteenth-century decadence."
*Victorian Studies*

"Potolsky offers a fresh and original contribution to the study of decadence and succeeds in showing how the movement is not a dusty relic of the nineteenth century, but a provocative and relevant intervention into contemporary issues. In true decadent manner, Potolsky approaches his subject perversely, arguing that we should look not at what decadence rejects but instead at what its proponents valorize. The result is a perspective that emphasizes engagement over withdrawal and renunciation. Decadence emerges from this analysis an exciting, revitalized ideology, one that suggests new ways of approaching contemporary debates."
*Melanie Hawthorne, Texas A&M University*