The Consolations of Decadence in John Fante's Ask the Dust.
Though fin de siècle decadence has seldom been recognized as a formative influence on John Fante's writing, the attitude toward modernity that Fante expresses in Ask the Dust is illegible without recourse to the decadent tradition. Tracing the novel's ideas about ethnicity, religion, and sexuality b...
| Publicado en: | Journal of Modern Literature Vol. 47; no. 4; pp. 126 - 144 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Indiana University Press
Summer2024
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=180366597&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 180366597 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 0022281X JML jtl: Journal of Modern Literature issn: 0022281X maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Summer2024 vid: 47 iid: 4 pid: 211 pub: Indiana University Press artinfo: ui: 180366597 10.2979/jml.00048 ppf: 126 ppct: 18 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 873KB tig: atl: The Consolations of Decadence in John Fante's Ask the Dust. aug: au: Clarke, Tim affil: University of King's College su: Fante, John Ethnicity Catholic Church Religion Human sexuality sug: subj: Fante, John Ethnicity Catholic Church Religion Human sexuality keyword: Catholicism decadence ethnicity John Fante modernism ab: Though fin de siècle decadence has seldom been recognized as a formative influence on John Fante's writing, the attitude toward modernity that Fante expresses in Ask the Dust is illegible without recourse to the decadent tradition. Tracing the novel's ideas about ethnicity, religion, and sexuality back to the fin de siècle , and reading Joris-Karl Huysmans's 1891 decadent novel Là-bas as its key intertext, we can see that Ask the Dust refashions decadence into an ambivalent survival strategy for transmuting alienation and suffering into a sense of personal consolation or power. Arturo Bandini, the novel's protagonist, poses as various decadent types, such as the dandy-flâneur, the diabolical apostate, and the impotent aesthete, as a means of transmuting the suffering he has endured as an ethnic other. At the same time, Fante himself employs decadence to critique the mutually implicative violences (ethnic, religious, sexual) that underlie judgments about social decay in the Depression-era United States. Fante's modernism ultimately amounts to an essaying of decadence—an asking of the dust for unsuspected consolations. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Journal of Modern Literature is the property of Indiana University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Journal of Modern Literature holder: Indiana University Press dt: @attributes: year: 2024 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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