Writers considered to be Aesthetes or Decadents produced work in every genre , including short and long fiction, essays, satires, and drama. Although Aesthetic and Decadent verse often seems particularly anti-Romantic in its emphases upon corrupt or hostile nature, its devotion to brevity and changes of direction leads to that most Romantic of forms, the lyric. Whereas the poetry associated with the movement generally appears serious and somber — members of this movement, like other Victorians, certainly believed in the importance of being earnest — the nonfiction widely varies in tone from Walter Pater's seriousness to the often self-reflexive mockery of Wilde and Beerbohm.
Last modified December 2003