Decadent Catholicism suggests a more renovating account of the literary interest of religious faith, evincing that flavor of Catholicismdecadent or otherwisewhich animates the achievements of modernism. As a result, Eliots poetry emerges not as anachronistically, artificially, or austerely Anglo-Catholic, but as drawing upon diverse artistic contexts which are in their own right compelling. * Time Present * Martin Lockerd's book is a richly detailed and delightfully readable study of the strange religious and aesthetic afterlife of the Decadent Movement well beyond the trials of Oscar Wilde. With its numerous and perverse Catholic converts, literary Decadence continued to reimagine itself in the work of many of the most canonical and not-so-canonical modernists in English, including James Joyce, Ronald Firbank, and Evelyn Waugh. A very challenging new reading! * Professor Ellis Hanson, Cornell University, USA *
