@inbook{2bc69ec80542419589c47add2f8ef123,
title = "The gender of decadence: Paris-Lesbos from the Fin de Si{\`e}cle to the Interwar Era",
abstract = "Paris from 1900 to 1940 experienced a remarkable revival of artistic culture, including surrealism in poetry and painting, poetic realism in cinema, and much more. Parallel with these developments are the lesser-known but equally remarkable activities of the {\textquoteleft}women of the left bank{\textquoteright} who gave expression to same-sex concerns in both their poetry and their lives and so form the socio-cultural tradition known as {\textquoteleft}Paris-Lesbos{\textquoteright}. The tradition is one legacy of fin-de-si{\`e}cle decadence whose principal practitioners are Ren{\'e}e Vivien (pseudonym of Pauline Tarn), translator of Sappho and decadent poet, and Natalie Barney, the multi-millionaire heiress and unashamedly self-proclaimed lesbian whose literary connections and love affairs placed her at the centre of the legend of {\textquoteleft}Paris-Lesbos{\textquoteright}. Their work involves a complex intersection of decadence, {\textquoteleft}sapphism{\textquoteright}, and {\textquoteleft}sapphic fiction{\textquoteright} and includes the feminist and lesbian reappropriation of Sapphic decadence at the turn of the century and a later revival of the decadent mystique of the lesbian as a {\textquoteleft}femmes damn{\'e}e{\textquoteright} in the 1920s and 1930s.",
keywords = "gender, decadence, longworth, sapphic fiction, lesbianism, mystique, sexuality, realism, Vivien, Barney",
author = "Deborah Longworth",
year = "2019",
month = aug,
day = "22",
doi = "doi.org/10.1017/9781108550826.023",
language = "English",
isbn = "9781108426244",
series = "Cambridge Cultural Concepts",
publisher = "Cambridge University Press",
pages = "362--378",
editor = "Jane Desmarais and David Weir",
booktitle = "Decadence and Literature",
}