On Jun 1, 2011, at 10:46 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
> I don't believe decadence is a useful concept in understanding capitalism.
I was talking about the persona of the bourgeois individual in the poetic canon that Bloom wrote about, and I dutifully followed in my days in lit crit. The voice of the high romantic era was bold, questing, and imperial; that of the 20th century heir turned it all inward in pure aesthetic play. Stevens' interior paramour; Ashbery's self-portrait in a convex mirror. But these are all 30-year old memories, so I won't say any more.
Doug