Decadence literature in England

Aestheticism The supporters of aestheticism arguing that art had nothing to do with morality. Instead, art was primarily about the elevation of taste and the pure pursuit of beauty. More controversially, the aesthetes also saw these qualities as guiding principles for life. They argued that the arts should be judged on the basis of form rather than morality. The famous motto art for arts sake encapsulates this view.

Decadence By the 1890s, another term had become associated with this focus on art for arts sake. It has origins in common with aestheticism and the two terms often overlap and were sometimes used interchangeably. By the centurys end, decadence was in use as an aesthetic term across Europe. The word literally means a process of falling away or decline. In relation to art and literature, it signalled a set of interlinked qualities. These included the notion of intense refinement; the valuing of artificiality over nature; a position of ennui or boredom rather than of moral earnestness or the valuing of hard work; an interest in perversity and paradox, One of the most important explicators of decadence was the poet Arthur Symons described decadence as a new and beautiful and interesting disease.

Oscar Wilde In England, Wilde who was identified as central to the English decadent tradition, along with Arthur Symons and the poet, Ernest Dowson. Wilde was important because of his high visibility in fashionable London clubs and theatres. He dressed flamboyantly, sparking fashions that others copied. The first manifestations of decadent trends in Wilde's work were "The Harlot's House" (1885) and "The Sphinx" (1893).

Oscar Wilde. The Picture of Dorian Gray "The Picture of Dorian Gray" was a real manifesto of aesthetics and hedonism, but the novel was not only directed against Victorian morality. Decadence was a cultural and philosophical response to primarily economically deterministic processes in English and, more broadly, European society. By the end of the XIX century, Victorian morality, with its restraint and rationalization of life, it is expected to have managed to gain a lot of enemies, among whom may not be the first, but certainly the brightest place took Oscar Wilde. Thus, seemingly ignoring the objective reality and focusing exclusively on the world of aesthetics, sensuality and paradox "Portrait of Dorian Gray" turns out to be a novel, finding the most acute conflicts of its time.

The Yellow Book One of the most notorious exponents of what was labelled decadence was not a writer, however, but an artist. Aubrey Beardsleys distinctive, witty and often erotic illustrations are immediately recognisable, with their innovative shapes and lines and bold use of black and white space. Beardsley provided the cover illustrations for perhaps the most famous and notorious of decadent publications, The Yellow Book. This was a periodical, featuring essays, poems, fiction and illustrations. Launched in 1894, it ran until Yellow and green – colours associated with bruising and decay – were associated with decadent style, and The Yellow Book contributed to their startling new appeal.

The Savoy. Arthur Simons The tradition initiated by The Yellow Book was continued by The Savoy magazine ( ), whose editor was Arthur Simons, author of «The Decadent Movement in Literature» (1983), where he developed the idea of the transitional nature of new poetry. At the invitation of Simons, the Art Department was headed by Aubrey Birdsley, who became, in fact, the artistic director of "Savoy". Beardsley had previously published his essays, poems and aphorisms in The Yellow Book, and his drawings, where "the presence of sin is always conscious," made The Yellow Book magazine the main scandal of the decade. In The Savoy, he published his novel «Under the Hill» (1896), which became the cult work of the. The whole literary part of the last issue of The Savoy (December, 1896) is fully represented by the works of A. Simons. London Nights" (1898) and "The Symbolic Movement in Literature" (1899) by Simons are the last works of decadent orientation. A. Simons' article "By way of Epilogue" is an epilogue of the entire «fin de siède» movement.

Degeneration and the Wilde trial Decadence alarmed those who valued traditional norms and values. It seemed to signify a society and culture threatened to its core with decline and decay. In 2020, there was the event that did as much as anything to halt the inventive flourishing of decadence. Oscar Wilde, at the height of his fame as the most popular playwright of the moment, was put on trial. He was charged with gross indecency under recently passed legislation that allowed homosexual acts to be punishable under the law. The trial was an extraordinary media event and its outcome was Wildes committal to two years hard labour.

Nevertheless, the experimentalism, creative energy and commitment to thinking against the grain that characterised aestheticism and decadence did much to prepare the ground for the Modernist period, which was beginning to gather its own distinctive powers after the turn of the century. Decadenc e