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decadents

decadents in literature, name loosely applied to those 19th-century, fin-de-siècle European authors who sought inspiration, both in their lives and in their writings, in aestheticism and in all the more or less morbid and macabre expressions of human emotion. In reaction to the naturalism of the European realists, the decadents espoused that art should exist for its own sake, independent of moral and social concerns. The epithet was first applied in the 1880s to a group of self-conscious and flamboyant French poets, who in 1886 published the journal Le Décadent. The decadents venerated Baudelaire and the French symbolists , the group with whom they are often mistakenly identified. In England the decadent movement was represented in the 1890s by Oscar Wilde, Walter Pater, Ernest Dowson, and Aubrey Beardsley and the writers of the Yellow Book. J. K. Huysmans's À rebours (1884) and Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) present vivid fictionalized portraits of the 19th-century decadent—his restlessness, his spiritual confusion, and his moral inversion.

Bibliography: See A. E. Carter, The Idea of Decadence in French Literature (1958); M. Rheims, The Flowering of Art Nouveau (1966); J. Pierrot, The Decadent Imagination, 1880-1900 (tr. 1981).

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	decadent Book article from: The Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English dec·a·dent / ˈdekədənt / • adj. characterized by or reflecting a state of moral or cultural decline. ∎  luxuriously self-indulgent. • n. a person who is luxuriously self-indulgent. ∎  (often Decadent ) a member of a group of late Read more
	Aubrey Vincent Beardsley Book article from: The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition ...English illustrator and writer, b. Brighton. Beardsley exemplifies the aesthetic movement in English art of the 1890s (see decadents ). In his short working span of only six years, he developed a superbly artificial and graphic manner, expressed in flat... Read more
	decadence Book article from: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology decadence XVI. — F. décadence — medL. dēcadentia , f. dēcadēre DECAY . So decadent XIX. Read more
	Verlaine, Paul Book article from: World Encyclopedia ...1866) and Fêtes Galantes (1869), was influenced by Baudelaire , with whom he is grouped as one of the fin de siècle decadents (an appellation amply fulfilled by his lifestyle). An intense relationship with Rimbaud ended violently. While in jail (1874... Read more
	fin de siècle Book article from: The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable fin de siècle French phrase meaning relating to or characteristic of the end of a century, especially the 19th century, seen as characteristically advanced, modern, or decadent. Read more

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