The Decadent Poets

Decadent poetry was a late 19th-century movement that seemingly originated with the first use of the word by Charles Baudelaire. The movement championed the idea that art should exist for its aesthetic value, unburdened by moral or social obligations. As a consequence, it challenged the strict moral codes of the Victorian era, often exploring themes associated with eroticism, forbidden desires, artificiality, the ravages of time, beauty, death, and decay which were often perceived as transgressive, even taboo.

Within its ranks are a who’s-who of unconventional and confrontational talent as well as perhaps its greatest exponent; Oscar Wilde, whose embracing of moral rebelliousness and unmasking of Victorian hypocrisy sums up the movement’s greatest achievement.