ENGL 3550

Last Updated

  • Schedule of Classes - October 31, 2025 7:07PM EDT

ENGL 3550
Decadence

Course information provided by the 2025-2026 Catalog.

“My existence is a scandal,” Oscar Wilde once wrote, summing up in an epigram his carefully cultivated style of perversity and paradox. Through their celebration of “art for art’s sake” and all that was considered exquisite, ironic, or obscene, the Decadent aesthetes of the late-nineteenth century sought to free the pleasures of language, beauty, spirituality, and sexual desire from their more conventional moral strictures. We will focus on the literature of the period, including works by Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Baudelaire, J.-K. Huysmans, and especially Wilde, and we will also consider related developments in aesthetic philosophy, painting, music, theater, architecture, fashion, and design, including music by Richard Wagner, Claude Debussy, and Richard Strauss and artworks by James McNeill Whistler, Aubrey Beardsley, and Gustave Moreau.


Distribution Requirements (CA-AG, LA-AG), (ALC-AS)

Exploratory Studies (EUAREA)

Last 4 Terms Offered 2024SP, 2022SP, 2020FA, 2020SP

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Syllabi: none

  •   Regular Academic Session.  Combined with: COML 3550, FGSS 3550, LGBT 3550

  • 3 Credits Stdnt Opt

  •  6267 ENGL 3550   LEC 001

  •  
    • MW
    • Jan 20 - May 5, 2026

    • Hanson, E

  • Instruction Mode: In Person