ABSTRACT
The fear of European decadence so prominent in the 1920s and 1930s was undoubtedly one of the most significant intellectual consequences of the Great war. It was entwined with the shattering of that notion of a gradual and unending betterment of humanity that had informed eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century philosophies of history. Although decadence was a necessary component of all apocalyptic discourses, its relationship with war violence could take on different forms. Whether decadence was made to precede, culminate in, or coincide with the war would lead to different visions of the future. Decadence clearly played a pivotal role in Women in Love. And so it did in The Rainbow, Lawrence’s other great wartime novel. If during the war references to regeneration and resurrection became common among intellectuals, novelists, and artists, the idea of Apocalypse already underpinned Paul Claudel’s earlier, pre-war writings.
