Language and Decadence in the Victorian Fin de Siecle

As Dr. Dowling demonstrates, literary Decadence in this linguistic and cultural context was to reveal itself as a mode of Romanticism demoralized by philology. Decadent writers like Paler and Wilde and Beardslcy sought to preserve a few precious fragments from what they imagined–and paradoxically welcomed–as England’s imminent decline and fall.