Aestheticism and Decadence

Catalog description

This course surveys the Aesthetic and Decadent movements, the late-nineteenth-century writers and artists who believed that the highest human value lies in art and beauty. The paradox that the sense of decadence and cultural decline generated new artistic possibilities will be examined through the period’s many genres and forms (essays, novels, poetry, book arts, paintings, posters, opera, philosophical writing). Authors to be studied include Baudelaire, Swinburne, Pater, Wilde, and Meynell.