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9780674194465

Decadence and Catholicism

by
  • ISBN13:

    9780674194465

  • ISBN10:

    0674194462

  • Format: Paperback
  • Copyright: 1998-02-01
  • Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

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Summary

Romantic writers had found in Christianity a poetic cult of the imagination, an assertion of the spiritual quality of beauty in an age of vulgar materialism. The decadents, a diverse movement of writers, were the climax and exhaustion of this romantic tradition. In their art, they enacted the romance of faith as a protest against the dreariness of modern life. Ellis Hanson teases out two strands--eroticism and aestheticism--that rendered the decadent interest in Catholicism extraordinary. More than any other literary movement, the decadents explored the powerful historical relationship between homoeroticism and Roman Catholicism. Why, throughout history, have so many homosexuals been attracted to Catholic institutions that vociferously condemn homosexuality? This perplexing question is pursued in this elegant and innovative book. Late-nineteenth-century aesthetes found in the Church a peculiar language that gave them a means of artistic and sexual expression. The brilliant cast of characters that parades through this book includes Oscar Wilde, Charles Baudelaire, J.-K. Huysmans, Walter Pater, and Paul Verlaine. Art for these writers was a mystical and erotic experience. In decadent Catholicism we can glimpse the beginnings of a postmodern valorization of perversity and performativity. Catholicism offered both the hysterical symptom and the last hope for paganism amid the dullness of Victorian puritanism and bourgeois materialism.

Table of Contents

Introduction
The Dialectic of Shame and Grace
Perfect Wagnerites
Christianity as Paradis Artificiel
Verlaine's Amour
In Praise of Shame
Huysmans Mysterique
Unconscious Unction
Conversion Hysteria
Christianity by the Back Door
Refined Thebaids Pater Dolorosa
Pater Noster
Renaissance and Resurrection
Virgin Marius
Monkish Miracles The Temptation of Saint Oscar
Christ for Christ's Sake
Ritualism and Dandyism
Seduction and the Scarlet Woman
The Confessional Unmasked Priests and Acolytes
Fragrant Prayers
Father Silverpoints
Pio Corvo
Saint Oscar Redivivus Conclusion Notes
Index Illustrations The Wagnerites, by Aubrey Beardsley
The Ascension of Saint Rose of Lima, from Aubrey Beardsley's Under the Hill (1895)
Engraving of Charcot at the Salp#234tri#232re
Drawing of Saint Philip, from Charcot and Richer's Les Demoniaques dans l'Art (1887)
The Crucifixion (1512-1516), by Matthias Grunewald (detail)
Salome Dancing before Herod (1876), by Gustave Moreau
"Height of Fashion" (1866), from Punch
"Selling off!" (1851), from Punch
John and Salom#233 by Aubrey Beardsley, from Oscar Wilde's Salom#233 (1892)
"A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing" (1877), from Punch
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

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