Introduction and Scope

Charles Baudelaire is most often considered to be the central figure of this movement in France. His collection of poetry, Les Fleurs du Mal (1857), deemed obscene by the French government and consequently banned, juxtaposes the world of "spleen" (death, decay, and disease) with that of "ideal" (happiness, pleasure, and escapism). Other French poets and writers of this era include Barbey d'Aurevilly (Les Diaboliques, 1874), the Goncourts (Soeur Philomène, 1890), Joris-Karl Huysmans (A Rebours, 1884), and the Symbolists Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, and Stephane Mallarme. In England, a tamer (although no less scandalous) form of Decadence, known as Aestheticism, found expression in the work of Oscar Wilde, Arthur Symons, Ernest Dowson, and even a young W. B. Yeats.

Any attempt to distill the complexity of an era into one overarching theme can prove problematic, since many less famous figures as well as slippage between terms and temporality will inevitably be overlooked. Nonetheless, this guide attempts this reduction as a means to provide an introduction to the topic and a basis for further research for college students and other researchers. For the sake of clarity, no attempt at comprehensiveness is made, but rather, only the most well known poets and writers are included. Those who wish to pursue advanced scholarship in this era may eventually want to examine non-canonical vestiges of the fin de siecle.

Most of the materials in this guide are either bilingual or exclusively written in English, but where no sufficient English language resource is available, a French resource is provided. Most of the work of these major French poets and writers can be read in English translation, which is sufficient for introductory purposes. However, since linguistic subtleties are often perverted through translation, more advanced researchers will eventually want to analyze the texts in their original language.

Subject Headings and Browsing Areas

All the sources in this guide are located in the Herman B. Wells Library unless otherwise noted. The following subject headings can be used to find materials via IUCAT. The corresponding browsing areas can be visited for serendipitous discoveries.

Decadence (literary movement)--France	PQ283-PQ289
Decadence (literary movement)--Great Britain	PR468
Decadence in Literature	PN56
Degeneration in Literature	PR878
Aestheticism (literature)	PN771/PR468
French Literature--19th century	PQ283-PQ295
English Literature--19th century	PR478
English Literature--French Influences	PR468

Literary Gazetteers

Literary gazetteers provide the names and locations of places of particular literary interest. Since the city was a central motif of much of the Decadents' work, which most often contained sketches of urban life, a working knowledge of Paris and London and the specific places that these writers inhabited is beneficial.

Bonnefous, R. Guide littéraire de la France. Paris: Hachette, 1964. [DC16 .G945]
"A guide to localities with literary connections, arranged in 6 sections for the major regions with 128 itineraries. Masses of detailed information as expected from a work in the Guides Bleu series. Indexes of Paris streets, towns, and writers." [Walford's Guide to Reference Materials]

Eagle, Dorothy and Meic Stephens (eds.). Oxford Literary Guide to Great Britain and Ireland, 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. [PR109 .E18 1993 REF]

Littlewood, Ian. Paris: a literary companion. New York: F. Watts, 1988. [PQ148 .L58 1988]

Vansittart, Peter. London: a literary companion. London: Murray, 1992. [PR110.L6 V36 1992]

General Reference, French

The following reference guides contain general information that acts as both an introduction to the topic and a spring-board to more narrowly focused research. Those with no prior knowledge of these writers or this era in literary history will want to consult one of these sources first.

• Beum, Robert Lawrence. Nineteenth-Century French Poets. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 217. Detroit: Gale Group, 2000. [ PQ433 .N56 2000 REF]
  This volume of the Dictionary of Literary Biography contains numerous lengthy essays on Decadent poets, including Baudelaire, Mallarme, Rimbaud, and Verlaine. Each article consists of a short bibliography, pictures and a biographical overview of the poet's life, as well as ephemera such as facsimiles of manuscripts and artists' sketches. A section in the back entitled "Other Poets" includes information on non-canonical poets such as Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly and Theophile Gautier. An appendix provides excerpts from critical essays and books while the introduction lays out an evocative discursive structure for the "schools" of French poetry in this era.

• France, Peter. The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. [ PQ41 .N492 1995 REF]
  This source is arranged alphabetically with short, concise entries on a wide range of subjects and writers. There is an entire section on "Decadence" and the front matter includes a timeline that juxtaposes political and literary history.

• Levi, Anthony. Guide to French Literature: 1789 to Present. Chicago: St. James Press, 1992. [ PQ41 .L48 1992 REF]
  The introduction to this volume explains that its purpose is to fill the need for "Anglophone guides to literature of other European languages not uniquely based on applying the critical philosophies of schools of English." Ironically, its subsequent interest in exploring the link between literature and cultural history has since become de rigeur in the academy. Nonetheless, this source does a wonderful job of contextualizing Baudelaire, the Goncourts, Huysmans, and the rest. Decadence is discussed in the entire first half of the "Symbolism" article.

• Sartori, Eva Martin. The Feminist Encyclopedia of French Literature. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999. [ PQ149 .F47 1999 REF]
  This volume explores a marginalized aspect of French literary history since, as one can easily notice in the listing below, the French fin de siecle canon is still primarily the domain of men. The section on "Decadence" briefly discusses how decadent values affected the feminine "culte de moi." In addition, it marks Rachilde as the leading female decadent writer and claims that she was, in fact, more categorically decadent than her male contemporaries.

• Coward, David. A History of French Literature: From Chanson de Geste to Cinema. Malden, MA : Blackwell Publishers, 2002. [PQ103 .C67 2002 REF]
  This comprehensive survey of French literature and culture is arranged topically within a loose chronology. It contains articles on all the major poets and writers as well as a section on "Decadisme" which distinguishes the movement from the "solemnity" of the Parnassian school by noting its "rebellious" tone.

Individual Bibliographies, French

Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)

This source indexes criticism for 1950-1967 updating Baudelaire Judged by His Contemporaries. Consequently, it only covers the era in which New Criticism dominated literary studies, but this gives it historical value in its own right. Plus, it provides a great listing of sources containing translations of Baudelaire's writings into English.

Part I of this guide lists Huysmans' works and their English translations in two separate columns. Part II covers writings in English about Huysmans arranged chronologically from 1880-1978. There is also a handy index arranged by author, editor, translator, and subject.

Stephane Mallarme (1842-1898)

The introduction to this retrospective, critical bibliography describes the history of Mallarme criticism. The entries, which cover the years 1901-1979, are arranged chronologically and contain some abstracts. There is an author and subject index and a list of the leading non-native critics of French literature at the time of the bibliography's publication.

With the exception of A Season in Hell, The Illuminations collection of prose poems is Rimbaud's most lauded work. This extensive bibliography in French indexes the entire collection poem by poem, word by word. Citations reference works written in French primarily but also lists those written in English, Italian, and German.

Paul Verlaine (1844-1896)

Although mostly a collection of Verlaine's verse, this book also contains an extensive bibliography which lists older bibliographies, collections of iconography, anthologies of poetry, and critical journal articles from 1913-1965. The front matter includes a chronology of Verlaine's life as well as drawings and photographs.

General Reference, British

The following reference guides contain general information that acts as both an introduction to the topic and a spring-board to more narrowly focused research. Those with no prior knowledge of these writers or this era in literary history will want to consult one of these sources first.

• Cevasco, G. A. The 1890s: An Encyclopedia of British Literature, Art, and Culture. New York: Garland, 1993. [DA560 .A18 1993]
  This book chronicles the period in which decadence reached its commercial peak. The coverage of this book is vast-everything from absinthe and The Yellow Book to libraries and suicide. The entries are arranged alphabetically and focus on British culture but also mention the French Decadents. One hundred of the entries list the most influential books of the period.

• Dowling, Linda C. Aestheticism and Decadence: A Selective Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1977. [Z2013 .D68]
  This bibliography "constitutes the first listing of books and articles dealing with Aestheticism and Decadence on any grand scale and Ms. Dowling has also furnished a preface where problems in the historiography of the period 1880 to 1900 are subjected to acute and stylish analysis; she has also responsibly annotated the items of her selection" [Ian Fletcher, University of Reading]

• Drabble, M. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. [PR19 .O94 2000, REF]
  This comprehensive, alphabetically arranged resource contains short, concise information for virtually all related subjects and writers. There is not a lot of information in each entry, but the inter-textual references are superb and even minor writers (e.g. John Gray) are covered. The appendix provides a timeline that juxtaposes literary and political events.

• Serafin, S. and V. G. Myer. The Continuum Encyclopedia of British Literature. New York: Continuum, 2003. [PR19 .C66 2003]
  The longer articles of this volume make it much more encyclopedic than the Oxford Companion. Its content is rich but partial (extensive sections on Wilde and Yeats but nothing on John Gray). Following citations for "Aesthetic movement" in the index will take one to articles on Modernists whose work is indebted to the experimentation of this earlier period.

Individual Bibliographies, British

Three sections, one for each poet, divide this critical bibliography. Listings are selective rather than comprehensive and the annotations are very knowledgeable. Each section begins with a brief introduction followed by a list of the poet's major works. The subject index, like the rest of the book, is conveniently divided by each individual poet.

Arthur Symons (1865-1945)

"Beckson and his colleagues meet the challenge of verifying and expanding the canon of Symon's work with great success, and they take on two other challenges. The first--remarkable in a bibliography--is to be "readable" and in this they are also successful. The final challenge is to untangle what Beckson and company describe as the "tangled web" produced by Symon's inveterate practices of republishing essays in toto and more or less verbatim, cutting up old essays and splicing the parts into new wholes and borrowing old bits in new essays." [Alan Johnson, Arizona State University]

"List of Wilde's works (43 p.), followed by annotated bibliography of books, chapters, articles, and dissertations. Over 3,300 secondary items cited in all. Indexes of authors, subjects, and Wilde's works. Chronology of Wilde's life." [Walford's Guide to Reference Materials]

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

With 10,152 entries covering over one hundred years worth of Yeats culture (1886-1988), this bibliography is the definitive source for all things published by, about, to, or for Yeats. The volume contains references to catalogs, other bibliographies, concordances, letters, interviews, criticism, summaries of Yeats' speeches and lectures, doctoral theses, and even films, poetry, songs, and plays that have been inspired by Yeats' work.

Databases

These electronic databases can be accessed with a subscription (username and password) via IU Libraries website. All are multi-lingual, but ARTFL and FRANCIS are best utilized in French. With the exception of ARTFL which also contains full primary texts, all of these databases primarily cite secondary source materials.

• ARTFL. Chicago: University of Chicago, Medieval Ages--.
  ARTFL (American and French Research on the Treasury of the French Language) contains the full text to works in the compilation Tresor de la Langue Francaise. In addition, the database allows users to search for articles, critical essays, letters, and poetry, and it contains a variety of French dictionaries. Irregular updates.

• Dissertation Abstracts. Ann Arbor, MI: Proquest/UMI, 1861--.
  This is an extensive database for citations and abstracts of US doctoral and masters' theses. Dissertations may be requested via interlibrary loan. A recent search for "fin de siecle literature" returned 53 hits. Irregular updates.

• Arts and Humanities Citation Index. Philadelphia, PA: Institute for Scientific Information, 1977--.
  Part of the Web of Science, this database indexes 1,150 of the leading arts and humanities journals. References for information published during 1975-1986 is available on CD-ROM. This is an excellent resource for conducting citation searches for advanced, in-depth research. Weekly updates.

• FRANCIS. Vandoeuvre-lès-Nancy, France: Institut de l'Information Scientifique et Technique du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (INIST-CNRS), 1984--.
  The majority of this French database consists of records pertaining to the humanities, however, its vast 1,864,429 records covers numerous subjects in the social sciences and economics as well. Even though some of the abstracts are written in English, searches should be conducted in French. Monthly updates.

• MLA Bibliography. New York: Modern Language Association, 1963--.
  This is the premier electronic database for literature, language, and folklore, indexing over 3,000 journals plus dissertations, chapters in books, and proceedings. A recent quick search for "decadent" produced hundreds of results. Quarterly updates.

Historical Periodicals

Most of the work of the Decadent writers was first published in one of the numerous literary magazines that, alongside books, had begun flooding the market in the early part of the nineteenth century. The following literary journals' editorial mission was to publish stories, poetry, essays, and illustrations that contained decadent themes. All of these magazines have been preserved in their original form and are, consequently, fantastic resources for experiencing the work of these writers in their original context.

Baju, Anatole (ed.). Le Décadent. Paris: Anatole Baju, 1887-1889. [AP20 .D292 B-LILLY]

Socialist journalist Anatole Baju created this bi-monthly journal to exalt the epithet "decadent," explaining in the December 1887 issue that "if décadisme is not the final word, at least it is a high and elevated conception...we shall pursue the fight against naturalism for the sake of art."

Harland, Henry (ed.). Yellow Book. London : E. Mathews & J. Lane, 1894-1897. [AP4 .Y4]

The Yellow Book is the most well-known British journal of the 1890s. Illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley, the quarterly journal was notorious for its yellow covers, similar to racy French novels that were being published at the time. It contained essays, literature, and art by such notables as Henry James, H. G. Wells, George Gissing, Max Beerbohm, John Singer Sargent and W. B. Yeats.

Samuels Lasner, Mark. The Yellow Book: A Checklist and Index. London: The Eighteen Nineties Society, 1998. [PN5130.Y44 S35 1998]

"In The Yellow Book: A Checklist and Index, Mark Samuels Lasner provides the unique, scholarly, and necessary research aid to make it possible to access the entire magazine for the first time. The checklist section gives full details, in order, of the literary and artistic contents of each volume, including binding and title-page designs. Every author and illustrator is identified (even those who used pseudonyms) and references are given to standard sources and bibliographies." [USC website]

Symons, Arthur (ed.) The Savoy. London: L. Smithers, 1896. [AP4 .S2]

Arthur Symons and Aubrey Beardsley established this monthly literary review in 1896 with the intention of rivaling The Yellow Book, which had begun to censor its illustrations after scandal surrounding Oscar Wilde broke out. Much like its rival, it contained literary criticism, short stories, poetry, and illustrations by Beardsley, but it was not a commercial success and folded within the year.

Internet Resources

The following websites have been chosen for the quality of their content, usability, and (to some extent) aesthetics. They are either in French, English, or both and all provide links to additional related pages.

• Aesthetes & Decadents (Victorian Web)
  Part of the extensive Victorian Web, this page provides basic information and links to specific authors and general motifs of the Aesthetic and Decadent movements. Also listed are links to information regarding concurrent literary movements and the wider cultural context of the era in the areas of philosophy, politics, religion, science, and the visual arts. Information is arranged in a highly readable, concise, outline format that is ideal for a quick introduction to the topic.

• ATHENA: French Literature
  This is an unadorned yet comprehensive site for full French texts maintained by Pierre Perroud at the University of Geneva. The site includes French writers from the medieval to the modern era, including a sizable section on Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, and Huysmans. Some texts are scanned digitally while others are edited to include hypertext links.

• Charles Baudelaire
  This is the definitive site to information about Charles Baudelaire, the quintessential flaneur and "high priest" of Decadence. Included is a comprehensive biography, letters of correspondence, information concerning his friends, family, and contemporaries, an image gallery, and a discussion forum. Most valuable though is an extensive full-text listing of Baudelaire's oeuvre, including prose, verse, and art criticism.

• Fin de Siècle - Symbolist Art and Poetry from the Age of Decadence
  While more focused on the painters and illustrators of Pan-European fin de siecle culture, this site also features full texts in English of the work of six French and English Decadent writers. The extensive gallery of over 400 high-resolution scans of paintings and drawings provides an excellent visual context for the textual works.

• Gallica: La Bibliotheque Numerique
  Gallica is the online library of the National Library of France, which has an entire section devoted to Decadence and its related movement, Symbolism. Hypertextual links are embedded within this page to provide access to full text and/or digitally scanned PDF files of excerpts and title pages from the original printings. The site also includes scans of French dictionaries and subject specialized encyclopedias.

• J.-K. Huysmans
  Huysmans was a French writer and art critic whose A Rebours (Against the Grain) is considered to be the seminal novel of the Decadents. This bilingual site contains links to both English and French language literature, historical reviews, criticism, and interviews. The site also contains a Huysmans bibliography containing information for books on Huysmans criticism in four different languages, articles included in the Bulletin de la Societe J.-K. Huysmans, and compendiums of correspondence.

• Paris: Capital of the 19th century
  "This website offers digitized resources for the study of 19th century French history and culture. Beginning as a project aimed to assist students' engagement with this particular period and understanding of French civilization, the digitization work has resulted in a variety of material being available online including texts, images (including artworks and architectural drawings), maps and other documentation...The collection itself may be searched or browsed in a number of ways by, for example, by theme, creator, or period. Each resource is accompanied by a library record and while physical access to a lot of the material is limited to Brown University users, other users may use the digital versions for educational or other non-profit purposes." [Dr. Shoshannah Holdom, Humbul Humanities Hub]

• Poetes.com
  This is a site devoted to nineteenth century Romantic, Symbolist, and Decadent French poets. It is entirely in French and contains very aesthetically pleasing pages for individual poets, including Baudelaire, Gautier, Mallarme, Rimbaud, and Verlaine. The site also features an extensive listing of links to French literary sites as well as an interface for querying seven search engines simultaneously.

• Ressources sur le dix-neuvième siècle
  This is the French language portal of the Society of Dix-Neuviémistes at Bristol University. It provides access to information about nineteenth century France, which includes full online texts, images, and links to websites about literature, culture, history, music and science. Also included are links to related scholarly journals (including their electronic journal Dix-neuf) and organizations as well as announcements on upcoming colloquia in the field.

• Arthur Rimbaud
  "This website is dedicated to the life and works of the 19th century French poet, Arthur Rimbaud, and offers the student and researcher useful primary material and information that will assist with the contextualization and interpretation of his work. A detailed biography, illustrated with paintings and sketches of and by the poet, is provided, together with a good online anthology of his work. Of interest also is the online collection of correspondence between Rimbaud and his fellow poet and erstwhile lover, Paul Verlaine, and between Rimbaud and his family. Together with a small bibliography, a calendar of Rimbaud-related cultural events, and further web links, this is a decent web resource for those beginning work on the poet." [Dr. Shoshanna Holdom, Humbul Humanities Hub]