Review: Decadent Ecology in British Literature and Art, 1860–1910: Decay, Desire, and the Pagan Revival, by Dennis Denisoff

Casting fresh light on late nineteenthand early twentieth-century British art, literature, ecological science, and paganism, Decadent Ecology reveals the pervasive inluence of decadence and paganism on modern understandings of nature and the environment, queer and feminist politics, national identities, and changing social hierarchies. Combining scholarship in the environmental humanities with aesthetic and literary theory, this interdisciplinary study digs into works by Simeon Solomon, Algernon Swinburne, Walter Pater, Robert Louis Stevenson, Vernon Lee, Michael Field, Arthur Machen, and others to address transtemporal, trans-species intimacy; the vagabondage of place; the erotics of decomposition; occult ecology; feminist decadence; and neo-paganism. Decadent Ecology reveals the mutually influential relationship of art and science during the formulation of modern ecological, environmental, evolutionary, and transnational discourses, while also highlighting the dissident dynamism of new and recuperative pagan spiritualities – primarily Celtic, Nordic-Germanic, Greco-Roman, and Egyptian – in the framing of personal, social, and national identities.