Vernon Lee’s Decadent Vision of History: Waste and Possibility
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James Dowthwaite
Abstract
This article considers the notion of decadence in relation to Vernon Lee’s concept of history, looking particularly at her late play, Satan the Waster (1920). In the play, Lee offers a portrayal of decadence not – as other thinkers concerned with history and decay such as Oswald Spengler or Max Nordau would have it – as destruction and collapse, but rather as potential. For Lee, decadence is seen as a moment in which old ideas, systems, or institutions fall apart and come to be replaced by something new. Instead of offering a lament, however, she offers decadence as a process of potential opening up of opportunities for change for the better. This is an ethical perspective on decadence. In this article, I trace this idea from Lee’s early aestheticist writings to the late, overtly political drama of Satan the Waster.
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© 2025 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: Late-Victorian Decadence as Mode, Theory and Attitude
- Vernon Lee’s Decadent Vision of History: Waste and Possibility
- Absinthe as a Cypher for Decadence and Catalyst of Degeneration in Marie Corelli’s Wormwood: A Drama of Paris
- Aestheticism and Decadence in the Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson
- The Closed Buds of Decadence: Reproductive Idleness in the Poetry of Alice Meynell and Rosamund Marriott Watson
- “All Things to All Men”: Decadence as Represented in Lionel Johnson’s Early Literary Journalism
- Dramatic Adaptations and Worldview Translations: The Implied Metaphysics of Roger Howard’s Margery Kempe. A Ballad Play (1978) and Heidi Schreck’s Creature (2009)
- The Neoliberal Impasse: Economy in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go
- Eating the Archive: Food Recipes, Migrant Women, and Decolonizing Multiculturalism in Alibhai-Brown’s The Settler’s Cookbook
- I’m going home, Riv? Yes, Richie. I’m a take you home... African American Homeplaces and Resistance in Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing
- Reviews
- Sarkowsky, Katja, and Mark U. Stein (eds.). 2021. Ideology in Postcolonial Texts and Contexts. Leiden/Boston: Brill Rodopi, 262 pp., 14 figures, 5 tables, € 117.70.
- Jens Martin Gurr. 2024. Understanding Public Debates: What Literary Studies Can Do. New York, NY: Routledge, x + 209 pp., £ 145.00/$ 190.00.
- Pamela Buck. 2024. Objects of Liberty: British Women Writers and Revolutionary Souvenirs. Early Modern Feminisms. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 202 pp., 13 colour and 13 b-w images, $ 150.00.
- Naomi Levine. 2024. The Burden of Rhyme: Victorian Poetry, Formalism, and the Feeling of Literary History. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 255 pp., 3 halftones, $27.50.
- Emily Horton. 2024. 21st-Century British Gothic: The Monstrous, Spectral, and Uncanny in Contemporary Fiction. London/New York/Dublin: Bloomsbury Academic, 272 pp., £ 85.00.
- Miles P. Grier. 2023. Inkface: Othello and White Authority in the Era of Atlantic Slavery. Writing the Early Americas. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, xv + 325 pp., 15 illustrations, $ 100.00.
- Allan Hepburn (ed.). 2024. Friendship and the Novel. Montreal/Kingston et al.: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 297 pp., $ 110 CAD/€ 143.95.
- Debamitra Kar. 2025. Conflict Zone Literatures: A Genre in the Making. London: Routledge, 196 pp., £ 145.00.
- Pramod K. Nayar. 2024. Vulnerable Earth: The Literature of Climate Crisis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, x + 295 pp., £ 90.00.
- Heather Alberro, Emrah Atasoy, Nora Castle, Rhiannon Firth, and Conrad Scott (eds). 2025. Utopian and Dystopian Explorations of Pandemics and Ecological Breakdown: Entangled Futurities. London: Routledge, 232 pp., £ 145.00/ $ 190.00.
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: Late-Victorian Decadence as Mode, Theory and Attitude
- Vernon Lee’s Decadent Vision of History: Waste and Possibility
- Absinthe as a Cypher for Decadence and Catalyst of Degeneration in Marie Corelli’s Wormwood: A Drama of Paris
- Aestheticism and Decadence in the Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson
- The Closed Buds of Decadence: Reproductive Idleness in the Poetry of Alice Meynell and Rosamund Marriott Watson
- “All Things to All Men”: Decadence as Represented in Lionel Johnson’s Early Literary Journalism
- Dramatic Adaptations and Worldview Translations: The Implied Metaphysics of Roger Howard’s Margery Kempe. A Ballad Play (1978) and Heidi Schreck’s Creature (2009)
- The Neoliberal Impasse: Economy in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go
- Eating the Archive: Food Recipes, Migrant Women, and Decolonizing Multiculturalism in Alibhai-Brown’s The Settler’s Cookbook
- I’m going home, Riv? Yes, Richie. I’m a take you home... African American Homeplaces and Resistance in Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing
- Reviews
- Sarkowsky, Katja, and Mark U. Stein (eds.). 2021. Ideology in Postcolonial Texts and Contexts. Leiden/Boston: Brill Rodopi, 262 pp., 14 figures, 5 tables, € 117.70.
- Jens Martin Gurr. 2024. Understanding Public Debates: What Literary Studies Can Do. New York, NY: Routledge, x + 209 pp., £ 145.00/$ 190.00.
- Pamela Buck. 2024. Objects of Liberty: British Women Writers and Revolutionary Souvenirs. Early Modern Feminisms. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 202 pp., 13 colour and 13 b-w images, $ 150.00.
- Naomi Levine. 2024. The Burden of Rhyme: Victorian Poetry, Formalism, and the Feeling of Literary History. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 255 pp., 3 halftones, $27.50.
- Emily Horton. 2024. 21st-Century British Gothic: The Monstrous, Spectral, and Uncanny in Contemporary Fiction. London/New York/Dublin: Bloomsbury Academic, 272 pp., £ 85.00.
- Miles P. Grier. 2023. Inkface: Othello and White Authority in the Era of Atlantic Slavery. Writing the Early Americas. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, xv + 325 pp., 15 illustrations, $ 100.00.
- Allan Hepburn (ed.). 2024. Friendship and the Novel. Montreal/Kingston et al.: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 297 pp., $ 110 CAD/€ 143.95.
- Debamitra Kar. 2025. Conflict Zone Literatures: A Genre in the Making. London: Routledge, 196 pp., £ 145.00.
- Pramod K. Nayar. 2024. Vulnerable Earth: The Literature of Climate Crisis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, x + 295 pp., £ 90.00.
- Heather Alberro, Emrah Atasoy, Nora Castle, Rhiannon Firth, and Conrad Scott (eds). 2025. Utopian and Dystopian Explorations of Pandemics and Ecological Breakdown: Entangled Futurities. London: Routledge, 232 pp., £ 145.00/ $ 190.00.
