Due to its significant stylistic differences from prior movements, such as Romanticism and Naturalism, I believe French Decadent literature is a critical step between literature in the 19th and 20th Centuries. As such, we must study it if we want to understand the rise of Modernism and the upheaval it created in the arts at the turn of the 20th Century. This post is a brief initial stab at what I've picked up from reading French Decadent literature. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Monsieur Louis Pascal , 1893 (detail) While Decadent writing displayed some aspects of the dominant literary schools of the 19th Century – Romanticism and Naturalism – its writers went well beyond either movement’s boundaries and into new ground. Naturalism’s journalistic, detailed descriptions can be found in Decadent literature. However, Decadent writers use this tool to probe interior psychology rather than present external social reality. On the other hand, both Decadent literature and Romanticism are repl...