The French Decadence Project is Underway

My French Decadent Project is underway! As previously mentioned, the objective of the Project is to demonstrate that French Decadence/Symbolism is key to the transition from the Romanticism and Naturalism of the 19th century and the Modernism of the 20th Century. This means the Movement deserves much more study.

To go after this, I've put together a reading list that has reached about 500 items. That sounds impossible, but there are three things working in my favor. First, French Decadent novels are relatively short: perhaps 150-200 pages, on average. Second, I've already read many of them, and I generally find novels go more quickly the second time around. Not to mention, I'll be going through them with an intention this time rather than just reading them. Third and last, the reading list incorporates plenty of short stories, plays, manifestos, and historical documents, almost all of which are brief. So my reading list isn't quite as heavy a lift as it might seem. 

I'm tracking my progress in a spreadsheet. This will allow me to build momentum from checking things off a to-do list. I'll also be able to move through the material in chronological order. Hopefully, that will help me identify innovations, monitor developments, see how earlier writers influence latter ones, how new themes fit in or react to existing ones, etc.  

The screenshot at right is the initial rows of the list. Blue-shaded items have been read and, once I 'process' my marginalia and notes, the rows will go purple. As you can see from the year column, I'm immersed in historical background and writers that were predecessors of Decadent literature, such as Baudelaire and the Goncourts. While there doesn't seem to be an agreed date for the beginning of the French Decadent movement, it couldn't be earlier than 1870. The movement was definitely going by the time Joris-Karl Huysmans wrote À rebours in 1884. 

I've just started processing the items I've read, which means compiling key passages, quotes, my notes, my marginalia, etc. Back in grade school, we were taught to compile such information for a research paper using index cards, but this would be comically dim-witted in the 21st Century. At first, I transcribed into Word (thank you, voice dictation feature!). However, I quickly realized this was an awful idea. Even if I ultimately processed as few as 50 items, this approach would not make it any more efficient to find something I was looking for. I needed to organize this material if it was to harness it effectively.

Checked with a friend who did a doctoral thesis a while back, and he suggested a program called EndNote. A quick search on the all-knowing Google yielded some other packages, as well as the possibility of using OneNote. This latter was appealing because not only do I have OneNote, but I know how to use it too. (Actually a bit surprised I didn't think of it right off the bat). So now, I have the additional work of transferring my transcribed material from Word to OneNote. Glad to be making this change very early on!

As I go through the reading list, I hope to develop précis about each work or about a subject covered by or suggested by several works. My last few posts on Decadence are rough examples of what I mean. The point of the précis will be to organize thoughts as I go, ensuring ideas and analyses are written up when each work is fresh in my mind. I can also nail down references and citations. It should help cobble together the larger...whatever...that I'll create out of all this. 

As I complete them, I'll post on Decadence. Right now, I'm working on two write-ups, one being an analysis of Dandyism and how it reflects and influences the literary aesthetic of the times. This should be important to the Project since so many Decadent writers and their protagonists are, in fact, dandies.