"By evolving an aesthetic of sickness and isolation - by fostering a belief in the unknowability of objective reality and the impending end of the world, the Decadents, who occupied the French literacy stage from 1870 to 1914, situated themselves in opposition to what was satisfying, enduring, healthy, and present. Yet if Decadent melancholy arose from experiences of object loss, the expression of that melancholy inspired creation and shaped the work of art. Drawing on psychoanalytic studies of mourning, from Freud and Melanie Klein, to Donald Winnicott and Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok, Beauty Raises the Dead examines the unique way in which the Decadents defined loss as a precondition to literacy creation."--BOOK JACKET.