Decadence and Modernity

Type :

Presentation

Pages :

10 pages

Format :

.doc

Published date :

07/20/2008

Category :

Arts & media

Sub category :

Arts and art history

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Summary :

Decadence and anarchism.
The movement of Naturalism.
Romanticism and how it links the spiritual and the natural.
The connection between decadence, subculture, and politics.
Themes of death and decay in Baudelaire.
Mortality and degeneration in Baudelaire.
The model of the decadent novel in A Rebours.
Oscar Wilde - The Soul of Man Under Socialism.
Conclusion.

Abstract

The Decadent movement, located in France and in England during the late 19th century, can most basically be described as a stylistic transition in literature between the pervasive Romanticism of the 1800s, the Naturalism that followed it, and Modernism. As art moved away from the romantic and naturalistic traditions in both literature and painting, towards the more classically modernist values of the early to mid 20th century, decadence became a key element of that transformation. With decadence we see the beginning of a rather developed form of the revolutionary spirit as model for art production, which became the basis for much of modernism and art since modernism. In its opposition to the widespread cultural situation that artists found themselves in, decadence spawned a more radical tradition that continues to the present. Because of its themes of alienation, non-normative sexuality, discomfort with civilization, and with society and its general culture, decadence necessarily forced artists to create a space for it, and for them in which these things could legitimately exist. In this way, a type of subculture emerged through the decadent model.