Abstract Lionel Johnson is sometimes described as a decadent writer with little thought of what that label means beyond the clichés that have come to define his literary reputation. Analysis of three essays he wrote during his initial and highly prolific years as a literary journalist – “Criticism in Corruption”, “The Cultured Faun”, and “A Note upon the Practice and Theory of Verse at the Present Time Obtaining in France” – enables an examination of how he positioned himself in relation to decadence during this early period of his literary career, as he catered to the sensibilities of a privileged male readership. It also allows for consideration of the versatility of his prose writing and his use of theatrical journalistic strategies, which see him mixing pejorative conceptions of ‘decadence’ with an evolving understanding of the term as a complex literary genre.

Abstract This essay explores the implied metaphysics of two dramatic adaptations of The Book of Margery Kempe (late 1430s): Roger Howard’s Margery Kempe. A Ballad Play (1978) and Heidi Schreck’s Creature (2009). The essay’s premise is that adapting a medieval text requires authors to engage in an act of ideological translation. This act of translation is likely to be indicative of the plays’ respective implied worldviews, of which the implied metaphysics is a central component. The essay analyses the plays’ crucial scenes and compares them to the corresponding sections of the medieval pre-text. Thereby it establishes that Howard, drawing on a Marxist understanding of history, presents Margery’s story as one of social emancipation. In contrast, Schreck, inspired by feminist theology, frames Margery’s journey as one of female self-actualisation. Despite their clear ideological thrusts, the metaphysical assumptions implied by each text are not straightforward. Howard’s play seems to allow for a metaphysical reality, whereas Schreck’s play seems to offer a postmodern take on medieval spirituality. The essay suggests that this incongruity of the plays’ implied worldviews might, at least partly, stem from their discursive features. It closes with some general remarks on how plays might imply worldviews.

Abstract This article offers a reading of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go in terms of economy. Drawing on insights from the New Economic Criticism, we situate this novel within a neoliberal and biopolitical context to illustrate the many ways in which the clones’ emotional and mental states interplay with a larger neoliberal economic system that ruthlessly commodifies and exploits them. We argue that the economy of affect in Ishiguro’s novel partakes of a certain ambivalence ultimately originating in contradictions and mystifications of capitalism. We refer to Giorgio Agamben, Franco Berardi, and Mark Fisher to explore the subtle intersections between Ishiguro’s novel and the broader socioeconomic paradigms. Another seminal issue we look into in this regard is how mental health issues are depoliticized to further conceal the insidiousness of economic exploitation. We also discuss how aesthetic issues in Ishiguro’s novel bear on its critique of neoliberalism. We hope that our economically-informed reading will contribute to understanding Ishiguro’s subtle socioeconomic critique of neoliberal capitalism and how readers are engaged to think beyond the neoliberal impasse, hauntingly bodied forth by the writer, as a crucial step towards overcoming it.

Abstract Marie Corelli’s 1890 novel Wormwood is set in late-nineteenth-century Paris and details the absinthe-fuelled demise of its narrator, the wealthy banker and writer Gaston Beauvais. Gaston is persuaded by the impoverished artistic genius Gessonex to seek solace in a glass of opaline absinthe, thus irrevocably setting in motion the kind of dramatic downward spiral that has since become a familiar script within addiction narratives. While Corelli’s novel has often been read as a Bourgeois critique of the Decadent movement which evoked what Kirsten MacLeod calls a “sensationalized image of Decadence”, this article seeks to show how and why absinthe came to serve as such a powerful cypher for Decadence by tracing key shifts in the consumption patterns and cultural representation of the apéritif. It then illustrates how Wormwood uses the figure of the absintheur to link moral-medical discussions of intoxication and addiction to fears of national decline and post-Darwinist anxieties of degeneration. It also explores Corelli’s critique at the level of narrative and imagery, analysing the symbolism of purity and corruption and the ideological implications of autodiegetic narration. Repeatedly invoking late-nineteenth-century poets and artists, the novel introduces an ambivalence that betrays a covert fascination with decadent subjects even as Corelli critiques the widespread misogyny found in fin-de-siècle high art and literature.