From Library Journal
Dowling contends that late 19th-century literary Decadence "emerged from a . . . crisis in Victorian attitudes towards language brought about by the new comparative philology earlier imported from the Continent." "The literary tongue of the great English writers" having become "simply another dead language," writers like Pater, Swinburne, Wilde, and the young Yeats were left shoring the fragments of language against their ruins. This work is sophisticated and carefully argued, even if it finally seems to claim too much for the history of philology. It helps that Dowling offers illuminating interpretations of various literary Decadents, without overrating them. An original, thought-provoking work of cultural and literary criticism. Keith Cushman, English Dept., Univ. of North Carolina, Greensboro
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
