Aestheticism and Decadentism
In the last decades of the 19th century there was in English culture a reaction against the principles
of the Victorian Age. This reaction went away from all practical issues taking refuge in a literary and
artistic movement, the Aesthetic movement, that challenged traditional ideas advocating a view of
life in the spirit of art and the principle of art for art’s sake in which great value was attached to
form rather than subject matter. Oscar Wilde represents this movement both in his life and in his
works and his novel the Picture of Dorian Gray is an exploration of the idea that art has nothing to
do with morality.
Aestheticism and Decadentism
Aestheticism was a literary movement which was not limited to England, but developed throughout
Europe by the middle of the 19th century. It originated in France with Théophile Gautier and
numbered among its members mainly writers and painters. Brought about by the sense of
frustration and uncertainty that marked the closing years of the century it expanded as a reaction
against the utilitarian outlook and the moral restrictions of the bourgeois society.
Adopting Gautier’s slogan, ‘Art for Art’s sake’ the aesthetic writers broke with the conventions of the
time and gave free rein to imagination and fantasy, taking their theories and attitudes to extremes.
They applied their ‘canons’ not only to their work but to their lives as well and lived an extravagant
life, devoted to the cult of art and beauty and always rich in creative energy.
In painting, the Aesthetic theories led to impressionism (Renoir, Manet, Monet). In literature, after a
first period, Aestheticism slowly degenerated into what, between 1880 and 1890, was better known
as Decadentism and after 1890, in France, was replaced by the term ‘Symbolism’.
Decadentism was marked by a sort of extremism in which the main traits of Aestheticism
underwent a process of refinement which developed until finally toppled into the absurd, the
distasteful and the futile. Disregarding the simple genuine values of life and disdaining mediocrity,
the Decadents cut themselves off from the masses. Writers, especially the French ones, were
charmed by imaginary and artificial worlds where illusion replaced reality and they often delved into
vice and corruption.
Among the most noted exponents of European Decadentism, besides the French poets Mallarmé,
Verlaine, Laforgue, Corbière (better known as Symbolists) three were particularly outstanding:
• Joris Karl Huysmans (1848-1907) who wrote À Rebours (1884);
• Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863-1938) especially for his novel Il Piacere (1889);
• Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) mainly because of Dorian Gray, the protagonist of his only novel,
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891).
Abridged and simplified from:
R. Marinoni Mingazzini, L. Salmoiraghi A Mirror of the Times, ed. Morano, Napoli 1992, p. 694
