Preface

Abstract

This Halloween issue of Volupté, devoted to the writings of journalist, translator, and writer Lafcadio Hearn and guest-edited by Fraser Riddell, is a useful reminder of the limitations of labelling, an issue that has dogged decadence scholarship since the mid 1950s, when John Reed’s book Decadent Style (1954) sparked new interest in the field and the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism published two articles on the meaning of decadence: Clyde de L. Ryals, ‘Towards a Definition of Decadent as Applied to British Literature in the Nineteenth Century’ (September 1958), pp. 85-92, and Robert L. Peters, ‘Towards a “Un-Definition” of Decadent as Applied to British Literature in the Nineteenth Century’ (December 1959), pp. 258-264. Peters’s response to Ryals’s article set the tone for discussions about defining decadence for the next seventy years or so.