ABSTRACT

Lis Norup concentrates on the aesthetic expressions of decadence or decadence as style and mood in Danish literature. She discusses Jens Peter Jacobsen’s Niels Lyhne (1880) as a prime case of the style of decadence undermining the naturalist novel from within, and Jacobsen’s influence on a younger generation writer, Johannes Jørgensen. Considering the decadent features of Herman Bang’s Haabløse Slægter, Norup argues that its decadence mainly lies in the presentation of the ambiguity of gender and sexuality, whereas stylistically Bang’s novel lacks the detailed expressivity of aesthetic decadence. The chapter concludes by analyzing the ambivalent shift from decadence to vitalism in Johannes V. Jensen’s novel Einar Elkær (1898).