Reading seminar: Huysmans, Bourget and Randvere, 19 January 2023
The title page of the first edition of Joris-Karl Huysmans' novel À rebours, 1884 (Against Nature or Against the Grain), called the bible of decadence
On 19 January 2023, a seminar will be held at the Estonian Academy of Sciences, where the members of the project will discuss À rebours by Joris Huysmans and Essays on the Contemporary Psychology by Paul Bourget, both fundamental texts for understanding the literary Decadence. In addition, as a comparison, a short story Ruth by essayist J. Randvere will be analysed – it has intertextual connections with Huysmans and Bourget and is itself a telling example of fin de siécle mentality in Estonian literature.