Decadent literature

John Galsworthy

Herbert George Wells

Realism

Joseph) Rudyard Kipling

Joseph Conrad

Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson

Neoromanticism

Oscar Wild and his Programme.

Decadent literature.

Aestheticism. Neoromanticism. Realism.

Questions:

The year of 1870 was the end of Victorian prosperity in England and the beginning of the new landmark in the progress of capitalism characterized by the growing class antagonism.

English literature of the period was represented, as we have already discussed in our last talk, by two main lines – realism and non-realism. While the literature of realism was aimed at creating a truthful picture of life (Thomas Hardy), non-realistic literature tried to escape from the realities of life either to the pre-capitalistic time (neoromanticists Stevenson, Conrad), or to the world of beauty (aesthetism O.Wilde).

A great role in the change of the aesthetic paradigm on the verge of the centuries was played by Pre-Raphaelites, a group of 19th-century English painters, poets, and critics who reacted against Victorian materialism and the neoclassical conventions of academic art by producing earnest, quasi-religious works. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was established in 1848, and its central figure was the painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Pre-Raphaelite art became distinctive for its mixture of archaic, romantic, and moralistic qualities, but much of it has been criticized as superficial and sentimental, if not artificial. Millais eventually left the group, but other English artists joined it, including the painter and designer Edward Coley Burne-Jones and the poet and artist William Morris who urged a return to medieval traditions of design, craftsmanship, and community. In his political writings, he attempted to correct the dehumanizing effects of the Industrial Revolution by proposing a form of society in which people could enjoy craftsmanship and simplicity of expression.

The eminent English art critic John Ruskin was an passionate supporter of the movement. Rebelling against the aesthetically numbing and socially debasing effects of the Industrial Revolution, he put forth the theory that art, which is essentially spiritual, reached its zenith in the Gothic art of the late Middle Ages, which was inspired by religious and moral zeal (усердие).

New literary trends such as Decadence, Neoromanticism and Socialist literature (Realism) reflected the political and economic situation in Britain. The general crisis of the bourgeois ideology and culture was reflected in literature and fine arts by the trend that got the name of Decadence. The French word means ”decline” of art or of literature. Decadence manifested itself in various trends that came into being at the end of the 19^th cent.: symbolism, impressionism, imagism, futurism and others.

The most widely known manifestation of Decadence in the social life in England was Aestheticism (a movement in search of beauty). The roots of aestheticism could be traced back to the beginning of the 19^th cent., to some of the romanticists. The British decadent writers were deeply influenced by the Oxford don Walter Pater who stated that life had to be lived intensely, following an ideal of beauty. Decadent writers used the slogan "Art for Art's Sake" that is to say pure art and asserted that there was no connection between art and morality.

The artists and writers of the Aesthetic movement tended to hold that the Arts should provide refined sensuous pleasure, rather than convey moral or sentimental messages. They believed that Art did not have any didactic purpose; it need only be beautiful. The Aesthetes developed the cult of beauty, which they considered the basic factor in art. Life should copy Art, they asserted. They considered nature as crude and lacking in design when compared to art. The main characteristics of the movement were: suggestion rather than statement, sensuality, massive use of symbols, and synaesthetic effects—that is, correspondence between words, colours and music.

Aestheticism had its forerunners in John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley, and among the Pre-Raphaelites.

Aestheticists rejected both the social and the moral function of art. Aestheticists tried to lead the reader away from the problems of the day into the world of dreams and beauty. The most famous representative of Decadence was Oscar Wilde.

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