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Djuna Barnes's Nightwood and Decadent Style[Note †. †Please note that this essay is part of a ...]
Author(s) -
Gutkin Len
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
literature compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.158
H-Index - 4
ISSN - 1741-4113
DOI - 10.1111/lic3.12142
Subject(s) - decadence , style (visual arts) , historicism , literature , scholarship , shadow (psychology) , art , philosophy , art history , psychology , psychoanalysis , political science , law
In this article, I treat the question of Djuna Barnes's debt to decadent aesthetics. Reviewing and synthesizing critical engagement with Barnesian decadence from the 30s through the present, I suggest that decadent style for Barnes should be understood as primarily a function of her ornate similes, which sever tenor from vehicle. Furthermore, I read Barnes's stylistic archaisms – her masterful plundering of past idioms, from Chaucer to Donne to Burton – in terms of decadent and aestheticist fascination with the rhythms of the past. Taking my cue from Carolyn Williams on Pater, I dub Barnes's method “decadent historicism.” Finally, reviewing some of the more recent scholarship on Barnes, I look at Nightwood's animal imagery and its link to degeneration theory, decadence's scientistic shadow.