> On Jun 1, 2011, at 10:46 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> > I don't believe decadence is a useful concept in understanding capitalism.
Quite right. But it may not be entirely useless in the history of style. It's kind of a loaded term, of course, and no two people can agree on just *who* is decadent. Still -- the story rings true, doesn't it? The initial impulse, novel and electrifying, then the long generations of epigonoi with their increasingly finical embroidery.
Of course the decadent isn't necessarily bad. Late fifteenth- or even sixteenth-century Gothic churches have their charm. But one does have the sense that the well is beginning to run dry.
Maybe these are the people who really suffer from the Anxiety of Influence -- Gothic architects in the shadow of Amiens, or poor souls trying to write the great American novel when Moby-Dick and Huckleberry Finn are in every public library. Ausonius was probably more worried about Virgil than Dante was.
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Michael J. Smith mjs at smithbowen.net
http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org http://www.cars-suck.org http://fakesprogress.blogspot.com