Decadentism and Aestheticism

Decadentism and Aestheticism

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INdex

1. What is Decadentism?

4. Oscar Wilde

2. What is aestheticism?

5. Parallelism between Andrea Sperelli and Dorian Gray

3. Gabriele D'annunzio

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What is decadentism?

Italian, in the twentieth century, took the term to designate an entire literary movement of European scope. The official criticism, to describe these attitudes assumed by some intellectuals, used the term decadentism precisely to underline the sensation of collapse of a civilization.

The term Decadentism derives from the French word décadent, which means decadent, and refers to the sonnet "Languor", published in 1883 by the French poet Paul Verlaine. This theme of "social decadence" was taken up by a group of writers, who entitled a magazine with the name of "Le Decadent", which dealt precisely with the various aspects of the crisis. The term originally indicated therefore a specific literary movement born in Paris at the end of the 19th century. Since within this movement there were other currents which would later develop autonomously, literary historiography

What is aestheticism?

Aestheticism is an artistic but above all literary movement of the second half of the 19th century. However, this movement can also be found in various studies by philosophers or scholars of the humanities who intend to give an etymologically exact definition, given that two categories concerning aestheticism are contemplated, namely the philosophical and the moral. It was born as a movement that tends to develop the ideas proposed by Parnassianism, a cultural current that arose in France in the 1860s, and is based on the imperative of "art for art's sake", thus seeing in this the sole and highest end of literature. Aestheticism is also a reaction to romanticism and its natural and sentimental mimicry, according to which life determines art.

Gabriele D'annunzio

In 1918, after the First World War and disappointed by the outcome of the war and considering it a mutilated victory, in 1919 he decided to undertake the Enterprise of Fiume. In 1921 he retired to the villa of Cargnacco in the municipality of Gardone Riviera on Lake Garda, creating the Vittoriale degli Italiani museum.

Gabriele D'Annunzio Italian writer of the 900, was born in Abruzzo in Pescara on March 12, 1863 from a wealthy family, he began to write while still a student with the collection of twenty-six poems Primo Vere (Latin expression meaning at the beginning of spring), published 1879 He finishes his studies in 1881 and moves to Rome, dealing with worldly news journalism. In 1883 he married the Duchess Maria Hardouin of Gallese, with whom he had three children. In 1889 he published his first novel, Il piace. In 1895 he moved to Florence to live next to the famous Italian theater actress Eleonora Duse, establishing a sentimental and artistic bond, five years later he published the novel Il fuoco based on the relationship with the actress With the outbreak of the First World War, Gabriele D'Annunzio enlists as a volunteer and participates in various military enterprises, being seriously injured in the eye in a plane crash following an emergency landing. He spent his convalescence in Venice where he wrote the Notturno published in 1921, a collection of reflections related to the disease in the period of blindness.

Oscar wilde

Oscar Wilde was born in 1854 in the city of Dublin. Already as a young man he became famous thanks to his literary works and was one of the most important personalities in the main English and French salons. He lived mainly in London and Paris, but in his many travels he was also in Italy and the United States. Following an unsuccessful marriage, he embarked on a homosexual relationship with an English lord and all this caused a stir, so much so that he was subjected to trial and sentenced to serve two years of hard labor. After this experience, he later left England definitively for France, where he died in 1900.

as a young man, a mask that hides the ravages of time and conceals corruption. From the comparison emerges mainly an affinity distinguished exclusively by a greater exaggeration in the field of experience and thought on the part of Wilde. The Duce exaggerated and found himself ill with Caesarism, Italy hooked on Teutonic aims, all seasoned with a final tragedy, unfortunately translated to all the Italian people. Italy in that period lived to excess, a unique case in the world. Wilde tore apart English society by putting it in the mirror, making it smell the next decadence. The Italian, on the other hand, wants to emerge, like Italy, a new but at the same time ancient nation, provincial in its ways, a power in the cultural field.

Parallelism between Andrea Sperelli and Dorian Gray

The famous writers Oscar Wilde and Gabriele D'Annunzio are chronologically close, precisely both belong to the second half of the nineteenth century, but located respectively in England and Italy. D'Annunzio's Andrea Sperelli and Wilde's Dorian Gray are very similar characters, both dandies, i.e. aesthetes who flaunt elegance with an unbridled lifestyle, individualistic and dedicated to appearances and who let themselves be carried away by the decadence of their era. Gray, as a perfect dandy, is described as a superficial amateur, for Wilde in fact, the true esthete is an old man with a

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Done by: De Marco Luigi Scarcella Antonella

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