000			a
999			_c31397 _d31397
008			230316b xxu||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d
020			_a9780199555116
082			_a843.8 _bHUY
100			_aHuysmans, Joris-karl
245			_aAgainst nature: a rebours
260			_bOxford University Press, _c2009 _aoxford :
300			_axxxiv, 227p. ; _bill. _c22 cm
365			_b8.99 _cGBP _d104.40
520			_aAgainst Nature by Joris-Karl Huysmans is a novel in which very little happens; its narrative concentrates almost entirely on its principal character, and is mostly a catalogue of the tastes and inner life of Jean Des Esseintes, an eccentric, reclusive aesthete and antihero, who loathes 19th century bourgeois society and tries to retreat into an ideal artistic world of his own creation. Against Nature contains many themes which became associated with the Symbolist aesthetic. In doing so, it broke from naturalism and became the ultimate example of decadent literature. Jean Des Esseintes is the last member of a powerful and once proud noble family. He has lived an extremely decadent life in Paris which has left him disgusted with human society. Without telling anyone, he absconds to a house in the countryside. He fills the house with his eclectic art collection and decides to spend the rest of his life in intellectual and aesthetic contemplation. Throughout his intellectual experiments, he recalls various debauched events and love affairs of his past in Paris.
650			_aAesthetics
650			_aFrench fiction
650			_a19th century
650			_aModernism(Art)
650			_aNeurasthenia
942			_2ddc _cBK