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Dowson, Ernest
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Judged the greatest lyric poet of the late nineteenth century, Ernest Dowson was the most technically gifted poet of the famous 1890s Rhymers’ Club, one of the most distinguished of the nineties “Decadents,” and a devotee the idealistic fin‐de‐siècle “Religion of Art.” The notorious and misleading “Dowson Legend” made him the chief emblem of what W. B. Yeats called the Decadent “tragic generation.” It was believed that the many losses Dowson suffered during his “untidy” hyper‐bohemian life combined to dictate the central paradigm in his art: innocence sequestered from but unable to survive a vulgar reality constantly threatening to violate it. However, this consistent theme – based largely on the writings of Schopenhauer and Pater, among others – predated and was virtually unaltered by the “tragic” events of his life.
Title: Dowson, Ernest
Description:
Judged the greatest lyric poet of the late nineteenth century, Ernest Dowson was the most technically gifted poet of the famous 1890s Rhymers’ Club, one of the most distinguished of the nineties “Decadents,” and a devotee the idealistic fin‐de‐siècle “Religion of Art.
” The notorious and misleading “Dowson Legend” made him the chief emblem of what W.
B.
Yeats called the Decadent “tragic generation.
” It was believed that the many losses Dowson suffered during his “untidy” hyper‐bohemian life combined to dictate the central paradigm in his art: innocence sequestered from but unable to survive a vulgar reality constantly threatening to violate it.
However, this consistent theme – based largely on the writings of Schopenhauer and Pater, among others – predated and was virtually unaltered by the “tragic” events of his life.
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Ernest Dowson
Ernest Dowson
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By meticulous analysis of his holograph notebook, dating each composition, and reading his oeuvre chronologically for the first time, Ernest Dowson: Lyric L...
The Reign of Reverie
The Reign of Reverie
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Chapter 6 traces the evolution of Dowson’s quasi-mystical erotology from Pater’s writing, and the declining course of his personal dedication to this credo....
The All-Absorbing Subject
The All-Absorbing Subject
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While it is nonsensical to speak of him as an eminent Catholic poet, Chapter 3 argues that Dowson is nevertheless an exemplary confessional poet and that—li...
Still Point of the Turning World
Still Point of the Turning World
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Chapter 4 examines Dowson’s first-hand encounter with Carthusian monasticism in the months before his Catholic conversion. Visiting St Hugh’s Monastery in S...
Love (In the Shade)
Love (In the Shade)
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Chapter 2 explores Dowson’s first encounter with Adelaide Foltinowicz, and considers how this relationship, too, came to manifest itself in his writing: ini...
Dowson’s Lunatic Asylum
Dowson’s Lunatic Asylum
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Chapter 5 discusses Dowson’s symbolist turn, concentrating upon his adoption of lunar symbolism in a series of lyrics from the middle of 1891, and his only ...
The Right Type of Girl
The Right Type of Girl
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Chapter 1 argues that Dowson’s preface to Verses, in which he infamously dedicates the volume to Adelaide Foltinowicz, is a canard, masking the provenance a...
Introduction
Introduction
Abstract
The introduction contends that the long-standing ‘Dowson Legend’, a pseudo-critical agglomeration of myths that present the author as a drunkard, a debauche...