In 18 99, n simons has rebranded himself as a symbolist and is talking about the symbolist movement in literature. The outbreak of the second anglo boer war in the summer of 18 ninete ind that really does do for decadence. And some of the most strikingly original decadent writers turn to writing the most awful, gingoistic doggerels. Neil hamels had decadence then become a rather toxic brand. So certainly by the time you get to 19 hundred, 19 o one, there are very few people who are out there as decadents. You've also got a new generation of young men at oxford and cambridge who are developing what we
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