Seeds of Decadence in the Late Nineteenth-Century Novel

A comparative assessment of the transmutation of a decadent mentality into an identifiable narrative style. The author examines the work of five major novelists in the last quarter of the nineteenth century - Dostoevsky, James, Zola, Hardy and Conrad, and attempts to delve beneath the superficial dissimilarities to trace perplexities, perversities and paradoxical combinations of excess and insufficiency. Her own definition of decadence reflects these characteristics. Suzanne Nalbantian is author of "The Symbol of the Soul from Holderlin to Yeats".