Decadence: The Strange Life of an Epithet

by Richard Gilman and Richard Gilman

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374135673
• ISBN13: 9780374135676
• Release Date: January 1979
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
• Length: 179 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Important Clarification of the Overused, little-understood word, Decadence

This is an important essay on language as much as it is an investigation into the meanings that the word "Decadence" has had since it's invention, which was sometime in the Middle Ages. The best ddescription of the meaning of this word comes in page 19 of my edition which is the Farrar Strauss and Giroux paperback with the lavender cover: "...."decadence' is an unstable word and concept whose significations and weights continually change in response to shifts in morals, social and cultural attitudes, and even technology" In other words what was 'decadent' then may not be now, and viceversa, it changes all the time with cultural perception, which is the first great observation, of many in this wonderful book. I was particularly interested in reading it as I thought it could clarify "Historical Decadence" the most famous and common being that one which supposedly existed in the Roman Empire. I say supposedly because I had always understood that Caligula and Nero were the best examples of that decadence, yet they were emperors relatively close to the beginning of the institution of Empire in Rome. After Nero's death in A.D. 68 the Roman Empire went on for another 408 years, or twenty five generations, which pretty much rules out the possibility that these two emperors were 'decaying' the empire with their rule. Furthermore, after the transition of the Roman Western Empire to Ostrogoth kingdom, the Eastern part of the Empire, with its capital in Constantinople (modern Istambul) managed for another full one thousand years, ending only with the invation of the Ottomans in 1453. How can anything so decaying, sick, putrid, corrupt, and inmorally driven (all words closely associated with the onset of decadence) have lasted longer than all the modern institutions we know of?? The answer in this book is that the feeling of "historical decadence" already existed within the Roman cultural context as a concept, and had been referred to as such by Horace, during the reign of Augustus, the very first of the Ceasars, and was a matter of ideological conception that had no root in historical reality. So in conclusion, the 'idea' that empires, like human bodies, grow, develop, age and die, is and has always been misguided at best. These are complex historical processes that can not be explained away by the use of one word, no matter how significant. The reality in historical terms is that one civilization rises and absorbs, and dominates the other, but it does not need the preamble of a period of 'decadence' to do so. A very helpful clarification is that during the period when the Roman Empire was pagan, and their 'morality' was 'decadent' they were at the strongest, politically, as all the great conquests as well as major cultural contributions were accomplished during the period, not later. The 'decadent' Empire that "fell" to the invading Barbarians (although this was a long and complex process, not one that happened overnight) had been Christian for over a hu

A Linguistic Tour de Force

The American Heritage Dictionary defines "decadence" as "a process, condition, or period of deterioration or decline, as in morals or art; decay." The word has its origins in Vulgar Latin, where its meaning was "to decay". However, use of the word in Roman times is unattested, the first documentary evidence of its Latinate origins appearing in the Medieval Latin of the second millenium of the Christian era. Notwithstanding that fact, the word has often been associated with ancient Rome, particularly the historical and political, as well as the artistic, decline of that once great civilization. As Richard Gilman points out, in his compelling tour-de-force, "Decadence: The Strange Life of an Epithet", "though the word was not used by the Romans, so strongly has modern consciousness been impressed by its evocative and categorical power that it has been widely and anachronistically employed in regard to Rome." More significantly, the word has been used in regard to Ancient Rome in a misleading way, replacing generally descriptive words used by contemporary Roman historians and chroniclers with the more value-laden, modern term. For, as Gilman also convincingly demonstrates, "decadence" has become, in the course of time, an evaluative and judgmental word, a word which no longer describes reality, a word which is merely an epithet."Decadence: The Strange Life of an Epithet" is a fascinating and erudite discursive essay on the way in which the meaning and use of the word has been vulgarized over the course of time, a singular demonstration of the way "we cheat ourselves of truth through language." Tracing the use of the term from its Latin origins, Gilman shows how the word has been used facilely, with little thought or consideration for its true meaning, to denote anything which contravenes moral or literary or artistic convention. Thus, the word attached itself to the writings of Baudelaire, Gautier, Huysmans, and others, the so-called "poetes maudits", who became the "French Decadents". Indeed, the label carried over to England, where Oscar Wilde represented the ultimate example of "decadence" in English literature and society, the homosexual aesthete. However, ascription of the term to these writers was nothing more than a kind of intellectual laziness, for while the innuendo of the word was that of decline, the reality of their writing was not. As Gilman quite astutely notes, "the existence of a word does not guarantee a reality, palpable or abstract, to which it refers." From its belated ubiquity in the nineteenth century, Gilman moves on to a critical discussion of twentieth century analytical attempts to attach certain meaning to the word, examining the 1948 work of British philosopher C.E.M. Joad, "Decadence", which Gilman describes as "extremely useful, since in its pursuit of the subject it goes down nearly every blind alley into which the word has enticed so many minds." Gilman then moves into the more recent proliferation of t