Épater la bourgeoisie
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Épater la bourgeoisie or épater le bourgeois is a French phrase that became a rallying cry for the French Decadent poets of the late 19th century including Baudelaire and Rimbaud.[1] It means to shock the middle classes or the bourgeoisie.[2]
The Decadents, fascinated as they were with hashish, opium, and absinthe found, in Joris-Karl Huysmans' novel À Rebours (1884), a sexually perverse hero who secludes himself in his house, basking in life-weariness or ennui, far from the bourgeois society that he despises.
The Aesthetes in England, such as Oscar Wilde, shared these same fascinations. This celebration of "unhealthy" and "unnatural" devotion to life, art, and excess has been a continuing cultural theme.
References
Look up épater le bourgeois in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike; additional terms may apply for the media files.