From Decadence in Huysmans and Barbey to Regeneration in Gide and Proust

Abstract

ABSTRACTAfter the Commune and the terrible defeat in the war of 1870, J.-K. Huysmans, Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly, and others created a kind of art based on hedonism, beauty, a refined style, and analogical (or metaphoric) structures. Flavoured with decay and death, their decadentism was fin-de-siècle, perhaps la fin du monde. In the midst of some posturing, J.-K. Huysmans and Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly called the importance of plot into question, while exploiting the growing controversy to introduce decadent works organized by embedded themes and images. Later writers from the same tradition, like Gide and Proust, adopted the decadents’ analogical structures and reintroduced traditional narrations, frequently opposing one to the other.