Literature Of The Fin De Siecle, 1883-1903: Degeneration, Decadence, Empire

3 . Besides incorrupt insanity and emotionalism , there is to be observed in the degenerate a correspond of weakness and despondency , which .assumes the form of pessimism , a vague revere of all men , and of the entire phenomenon of the universe , or self-abhorrence (Max Nordau ) In the light of this quotation , discuss literary representations of the degenerate in at least two textsLiterature of the Fin de Siecle : Oscar Wilde and Charles Baudelaire as Aesthetes and DecadentsThe lit that marks the rest of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the 20th century effectively achieves the shift from impostureistic traditionalism to modernness . The Decadent proceeding comprises numerous literary trends and techniques , such as Aestheticism , Impressionism and Symbolism for instance , uniting them by means of a common creed While Decadence is specific of french literature where it has made itself known through the works of Baudelaire , Verlaine , Huysmans and many others , there are important instances of the same movement in the English literature as well , mainly in the works of Wilde , Pater or Swinburne . As its name hints , the Decadent Movement can be characterized as a lapse from the howling(a) stances that preceded it , be it the romanticist or the Classic idealism . At the same time , Decadence is equally far from pragmatism , mainly because it is characterized by an exaggerated pessimistic view of realism , which shows the sinful and horrifying condition of man on background . Thus , the Decadent Movement in literature is the atomic number 53 that introduces and promotes the ugly and the low in aesthetics Thus , on the one hand , the decadent movement deplores and abhors the natural (as it becomes explicit from Huysmans Against Nature ) while longing for the unnatural and the ideal . finished its pining for an escape from the immediate reality , Decadence resembles the Romantic Movement .

The difference however is that the Romantics founded their aesthetic ideal on the exotic and the lurid or the sensational , while the Decadents emphasize the lurid and the horrifying aspects of immediate reality , building their aesthetics , paradoxically , on ugliness , sinfulness , debauchery and devilish . The main landmarks of the Decadent creed are thus nihilistic delusion , spleen , the rejection of the common morality which is based on the greenback between evil and good and the idealization of art and truelove as the only true values . As Arthur Symons points protrude in his study on The Decadent Movement in Literature putrefaction actually delights in and draws its essence from a spiritual and moral perversity : [Decadence] has all the qualities that mark the end of great periods , the qualities that we find in the Greek , the Latin , decadence : an intense self-consciousness , a restless curiosity in research , an oversubtilizing refinement upon refinement , a spiritual and moral perversity . If what we call the classic is indeed the supreme art - those qualities of perfect simplicity , perfect sanity , perfect attribute , the supreme qualities - then this representative literature of to-day , interesting , better-looking , novel as it is , is really a new and well-favoured and interesting disease (Symons , 32 ) Indeed , the Decadent artists...If you trust to get a full essay, order it on our website: Orderessay

If you want to get a full essay, wisit our page: write my essay .