The decadent poems read in class offered interesting views on life, death and decay along and how that pairs with the scientific and fantastical world. One poem that stuck out was\u00a0Epitaph <\/i>by Amy Levy which is centered on a man being on his death bed connecting it to the decadence movement because its actively focusing on death and how the process goes. The opening lines state that \u201cThis is the end of him, here he lies: The dust in his throat, the worms in his eyes\u201d (373). The focus of this sentence is the \u201cend\u201d of the man and his resting place, but it\u2019s paired with the more grotesque details of dust and worms being present. Then when placed in context of an Epitaph which is on a common person who died in bed, it places the man\u2019s manner of death in context of his social class too. One line that reveals the influence of social standing in relation to how you die is \u201cNever ask for bread, get a stone instead, Never pretend that the stone is bread\u201d (pg 373). By placing bread and stone in a same sentence as if they\u2019re comparable, this could be perceived as a commentary on social classes because wanting \u201cbread\u201d yet, receiving stone could be perceived as lack of access to what one may want and need. The advice of \u201cnever pretend that the stone is bread\u201d shows that one which is lifeless and hard can\u2019t be replaced for the other which is nourishing and supports life. It could also mean don\u2019t settle for the minimum in which you are given especially as a commonplace person because ultimately the time will come in which dust and worms will infiltrate your body and you will decay having missed out on the brighter days passed. This is supported by the following lines which cautions to \u201cNever sway and sway \u2018twixt the false and true, weighing and noting the long hours through\u201d (pg 373). This line is similar to the bread versus stone lines as it warns not to take one thing as a place holder for another. In this instance that would mean believing time can be counted as if its endless when its truly finite. This relates to death because there comes a time when a person\u2019s hours are up and the sway of time in noting hours comes to an end. Ultimately this extends to the Ledger and Luckhurst article titled\u00a0Reading the \u2018Fin De\u00a0Si\u00e8cle<\/i>, in which they frame this manner of literature as \u201ca burgeoning secondary literature explaining the ways in which the theory of degeneration moves from biology through to sociology, criminology, psychology and ethics\u201d (pg 23). \u00a0Meaning that degradation is expansive to multiple other aspects of human life and study. Therefore, Amy Levy\u2019s Epitaph can be read as equally social, and science focused in terms of death and the process of decay. It serves as stark reminder of how most common people will die regretful and succumb to their return to the dust, worms and more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The decadent poems read in class offered interesting views on life, death and decay along and how that pairs with the scientific and fantastical world. One poem that stuck out was\u00a0Epitaph by Amy Levy which is centered on a man being on his death bed connecting it to the decadence movement because its actively focusing … Continue reading Decadence in Poetry<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5321,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125361],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2023-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5321"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/989\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}