In Cynara’s Shadow: Collected Essays on Ernest Dowson(7 Writing and Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century)

In the 120 years since the publication of his final poetry collection, Decorations: In Verse and Prose (1899), Ernest Dowson has become something of a Decadent legend, much anthologized and referenced in almost every study of English Decadent literature, but still is considered a minor figure of the fin de siècle. He is, in fact, an important intermediary between late nineteenth-century Decadence and literary Modernism. This first collection of critical essays devoted solely to Dowson draws him out of the shadows and acknowledges his talent and legacy. The essays in this volume by established and emergent Dowson scholars offer new perspectives on some of the most noteworthy aspects of Dowson’s oeuvre, including Catholicism and Paganism, desire and sexuality, space and place, his relationships with Decadent contemporaries including Paul Verlaine and Aubrey Beardsley, and his poetic resonance in twentieth-century literature and music.

Table of Contents:
CONTENTS: Kostas Boyiopoulos: Tainted Medievalism: Ernest Dowson and Courtly Love – Alex Wong: «Non sum qualis»: Three Comparative Readings – Jessica Gossling: From the Drawer to the Cloister: Ernest Dowson’s «Poésie Schublade» – Bénédicte Coste: «For the life of me I cannot say!»: Ernest Dowson’s Dilemmas – Jad Adams: «Slimy Trails» and «Holy Places»: Dowson’s Strange Life in Context – Robert Pruett: Dowson, French Literature, and the Catholic Image – Joseph Thorne: Ernest and Aubrey: Friendship and Rivalry at the Fin de Siècle – Alice Condé: «The pale roses expire»: Dowson’s Decadent Diminuendo – Jane Desmarais: «The quintessence of a quintessence»: Music and Musicality in Ernest Dowson’s Verse.

About the Author :
Alice Condé is an Associate Tutor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Goldsmiths, University of London where she has been teaching since 2011. Jessica Gossling is a Fractional Lecturer in the English and Comparative Literature Department at Goldsmiths. Alice and Jessica work as part of the Decadence Research Unit at Goldsmiths and are members of the British Association of Decadence Studies.

Review :
«Alice Condé and Jessica Gossling’s edited collection of essays on the fin-de-siècle English poet Ernest Dowson, an iconic decadent figure whose significance is more assumed than established, is a valuable addition to contemporary reconsiderations of decadence in all its manifestations – as literary movement, as cultural sensibility, and as social orientation.» (David Weir, Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature, Cooper Union)