ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the myth of decadence that can be considered from three different points of view, the metaphysical, the literary and the historical. In fact, the myth of decadence appeared in the West during successive and increasingly violent crisis. The chapter argues that the Western myth of decadence corresponds to the period of a few centuries extending from the Renaissance to the current end of the Renaissance, to quote the title of a work by Julien Freund. Above all, it is clear that the myth of decadence is not an isolated myth: it belongs to modernist mythology. An example of the literary myth of decadence or decadism or decadentism to use the terms employed at the end of the nineteenth century is provided by the legend, or mythical figure, of Heliogabalus, one of the mad emperors who ruled Rome during its period of decline.