num_pages: 136
description: One of the great forgotten chapters in American literature is the generation of decadents, symbolists, and aesthetes who posed a major (and indeed the only) threat to the ruling literary authorities -- those identified with the genteel generation and the realists -- who controlled the great publishing houses and magazines of the day. This anthology brings together works by some powerful and once famous writers -- Vincent O'Sullivan, Richard Hovey, and Ambrose Bierce, among others -- whose writings, a hundred years ago, repeatedly attacked the conservative standards and morals of entrenched literary critics like William Dean Howells. Taking as their heroes British and continental writers such as Oscar Wilde and Charles Baudelaire, these writers refused to picture American life in the glowing colors Howells and his followers expected. In the process, the American decadents, symbolists, and aesthetes helped to build the foundations for American modernist.
language: English
title: Decadents, Symbolists and Aesthetes in America: An Anthology
titlecomplete: Decadents, Symbolists and Aesthetes in America: An Anthology
genres: Poetry
ratings_count: 16
publisher: Talisman House Publishers