Decadence and Euphuism: Walter Pater, John Lyly, and ‘New English’ Style

Abstract This essay begins by discussing Victorian responses to euphuism, the ‘affected’ style of writing associated with the early modern author John Lyly. Focusing on Walter Pater’s association of euphuism with ‘decadent’ style at the fin de siècle , the essay analyses how euphuism was discussed, theorised, and characterised during the early modern period, noting the ways in which later critics might have considered this euphuistic style as ‘decadent.’ More specifically, comparison shows that both early modern euphuism and Pater’s ‘decadent’ style sought to figure themselves as a mode of ‘New English’ which embraced a certain sense of literary and linguistic ‘cosmopolitanism.’