Decadent movement

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Pornocrates by Félicien Rops. Etching and aquatint

The Decadent movement was a late 19th century artistic and literary movement in Western Europe, primarily in France. It is now regarded as a transition between Romanticism and Modernism.

Concept

Decadence was the name given, originally by hostile critics, to a number of late nineteenth-century writers who valued artifice over the earlier Romantics' naïve view of nature. Some of them triumphantly adopted the name, referring to themselves as Decadents. For the most part, they were influenced by the tradition of the Gothic novel and by the poetry and fiction of Edgar Allan Poe, and were associated with Symbolism and/or Aestheticism.

This concept of decadence dates from the eighteenth century, especially from Montesquieu, and was taken up by critics as a term of abuse after Désiré Nisard used it against Victor Hugo and Romanticism in general. A later generation of Romantics, such as Théophile Gautier and Charles Baudelaire took the word as a badge of pride, as a sign of their rejection of what they saw as banal "progress." In the 1880s a group of French writers referred to themselves as Decadents. The classic novel from this group is Joris-Karl Huysmans' Against Nature, often seen as the first great decadent work, though others attribute this honor to Baudelaire's works.

In Britain the leading figure associated with the Decadent movement was Oscar Wilde.

The Symbolist movement has frequently been confused with the Decadent movement. Several young writers were derisively referred to in the press as "decadent" in the mid 1880s. Jean Moréas' manifesto was largely a response to this polemic. A few of these writers embraced the term while most avoided it. Although the aesthetics of Symbolism and Decadence can be seen as overlapping in some areas, the two remain distinct.

Artists of the Decadent movement

Bibliography

• Mario Praz, The Romantic Agony, 1930 ISBN 0-19-281061-8
• Philippe Jullian, Esthétes et Magiciens 1969; Dreamers of Decadence, 1971.

See also

• Flâneur
• French literature of the 19th century