The danger of decadence is also its value. We need more of it | Aeon Essays

is associate professor in Decadent literature and the arts at the University of Exeter, UK, and visiting professor of English at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, South Korea. Her latest book is Wilde in the Dream Factory: Decadence and Hollywood (2024). Her new edition of Oscar Wilde’s plays for Oxford World’s Classics and The Oxford Handbook of Oscar Wilde, co-edited with Alex Murray, will be published in 2025. Edited byNigel Warburton In the middle of Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), Lord Henry gives Dorian a yellow book. It is a strange book: a novel without a plot, and ‘the heavy odour of incense seemed to cling about its pages and to trouble the brain.’ Captivated, he reads it in ‘a form of reverie, a malady of dreaming, that made him unconscious of the falling day and creeping shadows.’ Like its hero, and with Henry’s encouragement, Dorian enters into a lifelong pursuit of thrilling experiences. He travels the world for Roman Catholic rituals, Eastern perfum

is associate professor in Decadent literature and the arts at the University of Exeter, UK, and visiting professor of English at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, South Korea. Her latest book is Wilde in the Dream Factory: Decadence and Hollywood (2024). Her new edition of Oscar Wilde’s plays for Oxford World’s Classics and The Oxford Handbook of Oscar Wilde, co-edited with Alex Murray, will be published in 2025. Edited byNigel Warburton In the middle of Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), Lord Henry gives Dorian a yellow book. It is a strange book: a novel without a plot, an