A portrait of the ‘decadent’ as a young novelist: the case of Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore’s Adrian Rome

This contribution aims to shed a light on Adrian Rome by Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore. Meant to be ‘vindictive, savage, spleenful[,] libellous almost, to the last degree’ (quot. Stark, 2023: 23), the novel appears to pillory ‘the Decadent mania to aestheticize life at all costs’ (Stark, 2023: 13). Drawing from Matthew Potolsky’s analysis in ‘Decadence and Realism’ (2021), I interpret the novel as a tragicomic treatment of the anti-modern decadent novelist, and argue that the protagonist’s undoing is meant to signify the ‘rejection of the counterfeit health of the Victorian novel’ (Kristin Mahoney 2021). Within this framework, I contend that the novel transcends mere parody of the writer-aesthete, but that rather it reveals a deep mistrust in the myth of progress and in the possibility of harmonious reconciliation; as a consequence, the ‘decadent’ novelist emerges as a figure in painful and acute opposition to their historical times.