Decadent Literature

This subject has the following teaching availabilities in 2010:

This subject examines decadence as a textual, historical, sexual and cultural formation, across a range of literary texts of the 19th and early 20th centuries. A predominantly masculine mode of radical aestheticism, manifesting symptoms of cultural crisis and informed by anxieties about class, gender and sexuality, decadence elaborated such key figures of modernity as the dandy, femme fatale, fetishist and aesthete. Students will be introduced to European and British varieties of literary decadence and aestheticism; art for art's sake theories of aesthetic production; relations between lifestyle, aestheticism and commodity culture; and emergent discourses of degeneration and sexology. The subject asks students to consider how decadent aestheticism was shaped by regulatory categories of taste and vulgarity, and by cultural practices of tastemaking, lifestyling and the aestheticisation of sexuality. Students will also consider the relationship between sexual dissidence and social and cultural distinction as produced in the representative examples of decadent literature studied.

Students who complete this subject will have:

• a first-hand acquaintance with some representative examples of decadent literature;
• an understanding of the controversies provoked by the original publication of decadent literature and later reconsiderations of it;
• a familiarity with a range of theoretical, critical and literary-historical approaches to the cultural phenomenon of decadence.

An essay of 1500 words 40% (due mid-semester) and an essay of 2500 words 60% (due at the end of semester). Students must meet the hurdle requirement of attendance at a minimum of nine tutorials in order to qualify to have their written work assessed and pass the subject.

Note: Assessment submitted late without an approved formal extension will be penalised at 2% per day. Students who fail to submit up to 2-weeks after the final due date without a formal extension and/or special consideration will receive a fail grade for the piece of assessment.

A subject reader including poetry by Charles Baudelaire and A.E. Swinburne, and short novels by Renee Vivien and Ronald Firbank will be available.

• A rebours (Against Nature) (J-K Huysmans), OUP
• The Spoils of Poynton (H James), Penguin
• Wormwood: A Drama of Paris (M Corelli), Broadview
• Venus in Furs (Sacher-Masoch), Penguin
• Death in Venice (T Mann), Harper, Collins
• The Picture of Dorian Gray (O Wilde), Penguin

This subject potentially can be taken as a breadth subject component for the following courses:

• Bachelor of Biomedicine
• Bachelor of Commerce
• Bachelor of Environments
• Bachelor of Music
• Bachelor of Science
• Bachelor of Engineering

You should visit learn more about breadth subjects and read the breadth requirements for your degree, and should discuss your choice with your student adviser, before deciding on your subjects.

• be able to apply new research skills and critical methods to a field of inquiry;

• develop critical self-awareness and shape and strengthen persuasive arguments;

• be able to communicate arguments and ideas effectively and articulately both in writing and to others.

Students who have completed 106-060 Decadence or 106-060 Decadent Literature are not eligible to enrol in this subject.