In the yellow book think poetry played a huge art role in decadence. In some ways, their poetry was far more decadent and far more innovative than their prose works. And to think that it of men who are writing poems, often about women who were the heire of sex objects is wrong. You get some rery, fascinating poetry by female writers. My favourite is michael fields, which is the pen name of catherine bradley,. an who were intimate life partners for 30 years. And my favourie is called tiger lilies. It's a brilliantly clever address to a flower that's clearly standing in for the female body. I quail before you as your
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the British phase of a movement that spread across Europe in the mid-19th and early 20th centuries. Influenced by Charles Baudelaire and by Walter Pater, these Decadents rejected the mainstream Victorian view that art needed a moral purpose, and valued instead the intense sensations art provoked, celebrating art for art’s sake. Oscar Wilde was at its heart, Aubrey Beardsley adorned it with his illustrations and they, with others, provoked moral panic with their supposed degeneracy. After burning brightly, the movement soon lost its energy in Britain yet it has proved influential.
The illustration above, by Beardsley, is from the cover of the first edition of The Yellow Book in April 1894.
With
Neil Sammells
Professor of English and Irish Literature and Deputy Vice Chancellor at Bath Spa University
Kate Hext
Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Exeter
And
Alex Murray
Senior Lecturer in English at Queen’s University, Belfast
Producer: Simon Tillotson