Customer Reviews

The Breviary of the Decadence: J.-K. Huysmans's a Rebours and English Literature (Ams Studies in the Nineteenth Century)

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Some 120 years ago after the first publication of A Rebours in Paris, the novel is still in print and still being devoured by devotees of exotic literature. Destined for more than a single period, for a limited number of aesthetes in the late 19th century, ARebours has had a continued appeal for more than a full century. Indeed, Cyril Conolly in his The Modern Movement labels the novel one of the "key books" to literature that molded "the modern sensibility."

Cevasco's study focuses on the origin of Huysmans's novel, its title, themes, style, and impact on such figures as George Moore, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Simmons, Aubrey Beardsley, John Gray, W.B> Yeats, James Joyce, and Evelyn Waugh. In his final chapter, Cevasco has briefer accounts of the influence of A Rebours on such figures as Proust, T.S. Eliot, Henry Miller, ands Ernest Hemingway.The clarity of Cevasco's analyses provides an imprewssive view of the Breviary of tyhe Decadence.

Highly recommended to students of serious literature.