{"product_id":"a-defence-of-cosmetics-defense","title":"A Defence of Cosmetics [Defense]","description":"29 pp. \"In his \"Defense of Cosmetics,\" Beerbohm travesties sage writing in an effort to ridicule the 1890's Decadent debate. Not simply perpetuating the sage tradition, Beerbohm employs the conventions of sage writing — acts of interpretation, the creation of ethos — in a patently self-conscious way. In England of the 1890s, the Decadents maintained that \"all art, surely, is a form of artifice\" (Beckson, Aesthetes and Decadents, 162); with this credo in mind, Beerbohm enhances his satiric effect by drawing attention — through parody — to his literary technique. Beerbohm advances his \"Defence\" by showing the consequences of a Decadent philosophy which challenges any essential, necessary relationships between particular historical conjunctures (perceived social crises) and their literary devices (sage writing) — between \"soul and surface.\" If all art is artifice and no literary voice can be \"symbolic of any age\" (Wilde in Beckson 192), then all that remains is parody, paradox, equivocation, and a sort of detached, mischievous relationship to the real. Although drawing on the conventions of sage writing, Beerbohm differs from the original sages in his inconsistent relationship to the text and an unearnestness that stems from an unclear personal investment in the satire he undertakes.\"--Victorian Web","brand":"Dodd, Mead \u0026 Company","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":39833763119174,"sku":"2322184","price":15.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1232\/9510\/products\/2322184.jpg?v=1646114173","url":"https:\/\/ym-demo.myshopify.com\/products\/a-defence-of-cosmetics-defense","provider":"Yesterday's Muse","version":"1.0","type":"link"}