Adeline Heck, Decadent ‘Lustmord’: Fin-de-Siècle Parodies of ‘Tristan und Isolde’ by Gabriele d’Annunzio and Joséphin Péladan

July 2026, Volume 20, Number 2, 22–41.

I will not analyse stage parodies or musical parodies of Wagner, which have been given proper attention elsewhere. Instead, I will focus on the literary realm, and more specifically, on the influence of French Wagnerism in pioneering a parodic viewpoint on Wagner in literature that was to find great success in the works of Decadent writers in the UK, France and Italy. I will show that the use of parody helped writers transpose some of Wagner’s key ideas into literature, whether in establishing ‘total works of art’ or in writing musicalised prose couched in a continuous flow of words. For these writers, parody functions as a self-protective strategy: it enables them simultaneously to ‘lay bare’ the device of Wagnerian music drama and to preserve their original literary voice.