Description: Examines themes of decadence in Charles Dickens's work and the ways in which the Decadent movement responded to Dickens.
Brief description: Giles Whiteley is Professor of English Literature at Stockholm University. He has published widely on the literature of the long nineteenth-century, with a particular focus on aestheticism and decadence. He is the author of four monographs including, most recently, The Aesthetics of Space in Nineteenth-Century British Literature, 1843-1907 (2020). Other recent publications include the three-volume edition Literature and Philosophy in Nineteenth-Century Culture (2024). He is currently editing Walter Pater's historical novel Marius the Epicurean.
Review Quotes: Here a high-end collection of scholars addresses the great novelist's condemnation of the decadence of Victorian Britain, the decadence of his own prose and his appropriation by the Decadent writers of the Fin de Siècle, one of the world's most stimulating literary periods. Rich food for thought, including examinations of realism, sincerity, cruelty, modernism, magic and even dining.--Regenia Gagnier, University of Exeter