Decadence Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Decadence was the name given, first by hostile critics, and then triumphantly adopted by some writers themselves, to a number of late nineteenth century fin de siècle writers associated with Symbolism or the Aesthetic movement.Decadant artists:
The idea of decadence refers to the supposed decline of a society because of moral weakness. The favourite example of this is ancient Rome, where, the story has it, a great empire was laid low by wicked emperors like Nero. Few bother to mention that Rome collapsed after generations of Christian rule. The really naughty emperors (Nero, Caligula, etc) were often hundreds of years before the end of the empire. The concept of decadence dates from the eighteenth century, especially from Montesquieu. It was taken up by critics as a term of abuse after Desire Nisard used it against Victor Hugo and Romanticism in general. A later generation of Romantics, such as Theophile 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. As a literary movement decadence is now regarded as a transition between Romanticism and Modernism. For further information see Richard Gilman's Decadence: The Strange Life of an Epithet, or Matei Calinescu's Five Faces of Modernity. For a guide to literary decadence, see Mario Praz's The Romantic Agony.
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