The Decadent Movement
In Our Time: Culture
00:00
The Oscar Wilde Trial and the End of Decadence
After the trial, Wilde is now mad bad and dangerous to know. There's a real sense amongst some of his circle that they might be hit by collateral damage. He was sent to Reading Jail for hard labour for two years. We literally died I think when he was 25. Johnson and Dausen were dead by the time they were into their early 30s. After 1900, nobody drank absinthe with their black coffee,. Nobody went mad and nobody committed suicide. But after the trial, well, decadence as a movement starts to fizzle out because people start to die.
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