Decadence and Orientalism in England and Germany, 1880-1920

Decadence and Orientalism in England and Germany, 1880–1920 examines the Orientalist portrayal of Middle Eastern cultures in decadent Literatures in England and Germany at the turn of the century. This book argues that the role of Orientalism in literary decadence uniquely exposes its paradoxical engagement with other cultures. In bringing together two fin-de-siècle European literatures, this comparative study makes a case for the transnational, if not imperial, nature of decadence. The East emerges as an ‘indispensable’ mediator between various versions of European decadences. The book examines the role of the East with specific reference to selected English and German authors: starting from Oscar Wilde’s Victorian vision of Egypt and Arthur Symons’s and Violet Fane’s acquaintance with Constantinople, it moves to Paul Scheerbart’s and Else Lasker-Schüler’s decadent Babylon and Assyria, and concludes by turning to Stefan George’s exclusion of the East from his poetic practice. The geographical reach of the East focuses on regions of the Eastern Mediterranean and Northern Africa. The cultural translation of specifically the Middle East into different European national contexts gains new—sometimes oppositional—meanings, avoiding a one-sided representation of both the East and the two national literatures that absorbed it. In arguing for a decadent cosmopolitanism as a model of heterogeneous inclusivity that reaches beyond the binaries established by Edward Said’s Orientalism, the present book brings twenty-first-century theories of cosmopolitanism into dialogue with art history and literature to uncover striking synergies and interdependences between the different manifestations of decadence in England and Germany.

Ancient history · Art · Decadence · Literature · Orientalism · Decadence, Literature, and Society · German Colonialism and Identity Studies · German Literature and Culture Studies · History