Against Nature - Softcover

Huysmans, Joris-Karl

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1604596716 ISBN 13: 9781604596717

Publisher: Wilder Publications, 2009

Synopsis

Against 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 containes 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.

About this title

About the Author:

Nicholas White is Lecturer in French at Royal Holloway College, University of London.

About this edition

• Publisher: Wilder Publications
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1604596716
• ISBN 13: 9781604596717
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 176