Delight or Poison

For most of the 20th century, Hungarian literary history disregarded decadence as a thematic or stylistic marker and refused to acknowledge that it was a significant cultural driving force of the fin-de-siècle Hungarian literature. I propose to interpret decadence not as a mere stylistic, moral or t...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Tőtős Dorottya
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Sciendo 2024-11-01
Series:Hungarian Studies Yearbook
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.2478/hsy-2024-0006
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Summary:For most of the 20th century, Hungarian literary history disregarded decadence as a thematic or stylistic marker and refused to acknowledge that it was a significant cultural driving force of the fin-de-siècle Hungarian literature. I propose to interpret decadence not as a mere stylistic, moral or temporal category, but as a cultural trope, a modernist way of perceiving the world and creating art. I hypothesize that the Hungarian reception of French and English decadence at the end of the 19th century produced a uniquely reflexive version of this phenomenon. I aim to understand how decadence integrates into and presents itself in Hungarian literature and to uncover significant works hidden by the cultural forgetfulness of Hungarian literary history.
ISSN:2668-7542