Decadent Historicism

Abstract

In what respects might we consider decadence as a historical concept? And in what ways do literary writings associated with the fin-de-siècle decadent tradition approach the question of history? In response to these two interrelated questions, ‘Decadent Historicism’ discusses the manner in which writings and artworks identified as decadent reveal a preoccupation with the historical authority that four different gender-transitive icons from Classical Rome and a broadly conceived Renaissance exert upon late-Victorian sexual modernity. The first example is the young transgender Syrian emperor known posthumously as Elagabalus, whose sexual insubordination fascinated Simeon Solomon, J.-K.Huysmans, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, and Oscar Wilde. The second case study is the sexually ambiguous Elizabethan boy-actor ‘Mr. W. H.,’ who emerges in the short homoerotic fiction that Oscar Wilde wove around him in 1889. The third section of the presentation shifts to Vernon Lee’s long-standing interest in the legendary castrato Carol Boschi (Farinelli), in both her early story ‘A Culture Ghost; or, Winthrop’s Adventure’ (1881) and its subsequent recasting as ‘Voix Maudite’ (1887) and ‘A Wicked Voice’ (1890). The final instance is the ‘fair girl-boy’ pantomime dancer Pylades in Michael Field’s Roman Trilogy (1898-1903), whose politically contentious performances reveal his power as a bearer of cultural and historical knowledge. In each case, these performers exist in perilous proximity to pain, punishment, and death.