One overriding strategy in this literature is to argue historicization of the literary phenomenon.

In the
Preface to his collection of essays entitled Decadence and the 1890's, for instance, Ian Fletcher (1980)
states that there had been decadences before the end of the nineteenth century.3 He talks about
Decadence as the "age of transition" in literature, and as such, he situates it between the "closing
phase of the Victorian synthesis, [and] the opening phase in those tendencies we call for convenience
'modernism'" (Fletcher 7). This collapsible moment is further seen as filled with "evanescence,
instability, failure, the enterprise of internalizing history and manifesting it as style, [and] a historical
and personal sense of decline and fall" (Fletcher 8). In a typical move establishing Decadence as a
period phenomenon, not an exclusively aesthetic one, Fletcher continues by showing the intersection
of movements that the last decades of the nineteenth century had molded together, he states that
terms like "PreRaphaelite," "Aesthetic" and "Decadent" "intersect with each other, and even
tendencies like 'Naturalism' are not discrete and distinct [within themselves]" (Fletcher 9). As such, he
concludes by noting that the Decadent author distinguishes himself from others in this constellation
of movements by a single aestheticizing move: by foregrounding his own self-mockery against it. For a
number of critics such self-mockery is the central notion of Decadence. In the essay "Decadence in
Later Nineteenth-Century England," Thornton (1980) believes that what he calls the "Decadent
Dilemma" lies in this mockery, which constitutes the essential element that sets the Decadent author
apart from other movements (Thorton 26). This dilemma, Thornton goes on to conclude, holds the
decadent man "caught between two opposite and incompatible pulls: on one hand he is drawn by the
world, its necessities, and the attractive impressions he receives from it, while on the other hand he
yearns towards the eternal, the ideal, and the unwordly"

Accordingly, Jan B. Gordon labels Decadence as enigmatic and as a plethora of paradoxes. In his essay
"Decadent Spaces: Notes for a Phenomenology of the Fin de Siècle," Gordon (1980) describes the
Decadent world as "composed of mirrors, epigrams, and gossip"; it is a world that only exists "under
conditions of flagging energy and failed connections where there is no longer any hope of a Unity of
Being" (Gordon 52). Thus the Decadent space, according to Gordon, is one where multiplicity sides
with singularity or utter individuality, where the Decadent "environment" is both public yet "highly
introverted," and where pornography, androgyny and narcissistic masturbation are all molded into a
parodic ecstasy in which the decadent hero achieves transcendence through denial (Gordon 52). In
these accounts, Decadence appears as the state of being of the author or of the character: as an
attitude of resistance toward a historical moment nolonger straightforwardly comprehensible by the
Decadent hero who is incapable of dealing with it.

In such readings of the literature, the rhetorical ornamentation in the texts stands for the mask of the
hero, and, like the hero, the rhetoric's true nature is only revealed once these masks collapse and are
revealed as empty. Hence, the true self of the Decadent, narcissistic hero is always shown when he is
unmasked, when he is torn by the pain and corruption of his actions and revealed from behind his own
pretense. In De Profundis, Oscar Wilde provides support to these later critics when he states that "Pain,
unlike pleasure, has no mask" (Complete Works 1025). This metaphor of unmasking defines for most
of today's critics the moment of catharsis that the Decadent hero has to experience in order to exist
fully.

While the aforementioned critics focuses on the hero as the axis of the decadent text, the New
Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics offers another view, when it defines Decadence as "a
literary movement whose characteristics include ennui, corruption, morbidity, neurosis, an
exaggerated erotic sensibility and a pervasive sense of something lost—a nostalgic semi-mysticism
without clear direction or spirituality".
I posit that the hero's purpose in these text is to create an negative effect so that these features are
used not to be displayed as themselves— stressing the aestheticism of authors' works—but act as
inverse effects to subtly assert a serious social criticism of its times. This decadent anti-hero and its
tropes becomes the representation of an ill-culture, and as such a warning of what is to come if change
does not occur.

The Encyclopedia thus summarizes the critical paradox of Decadent Literature. If this literature's
central focus were exclusively on the punitive introspection of the hero, one would be forced to accept
that this kind of decadence is not restricted to the experience of one historical period alone.

This example is perhaps too drawn out, but it highlights the critical problem of the use of the term
"Decadent." Sexual behavior and sin are, accordingly, not the only markers of more modern Decadent
literature, as other critics concur in referring to any number of other literary "heroes" characterized
like Chrétien's. Tying such social failings into psychological terms, for instance, Chris Snodgrass (1980)
talks about the "egolibido" in his essay "Swinburne's Circle of Desire: A Decadent Theme," and how
sexual transgression marks an individual's sense of imprisonment in decadent literatures. He states
that "it becomes clear that man's apostasy was caused, in fact, by a failure of the will—the freedom
[being] the will towards passionate transgression" (Snodgrass 69). Snodgrass goes on by stating that,
while violence has to be prohibited to ensure the stability necessary for survival, there remains a
repressed threat: the taboo "in assigning a negative definition to these forbidden objects and
experiences, inspires fear, [as well as] it also inspires religious-erotic fascination, sometimes even
adoration and devotion: it This example is perhaps too drawn out, but it highlights the critical problem
of the use of the term "Decadent." Sexual behavior and sin are, accordingly, not the only markers of
more modern Decadent literature, as other critics concur in referring to any number of other literary
"heroes" characterized like Chrétien's. Tying such social failings into psychological terms, for instance,
Chris Snodgrass (1980) talks about the "egolibido" in his essay "Swinburne's Circle of Desire: A
Decadent Theme," and how sexual transgression marks an individual's sense of imprisonment in
decadent literatures. He states that "it becomes clear that man's apostasy was caused, in fact, by a
failure of the will—the freedom [being] the will towards passionate transgression" (Snodgrass 69).
Snodgrass goes on by stating that, while violence has to be prohibited to ensure the stability necessary
for survival, there remains a repressed threat: the taboo "in assigning a negative definition to these
forbidden objects and experiences, inspires fear, [as well as] it also inspires religious-erotic fascination,
sometimes even adoration and devotion: it evokes desire" (Snodgrass 68). Hence through pain, this
particular Decadent hero is unmasked, and it is in the pain of the psychological punishment that he
achieves pleasure.

Again, pleasure through pain remains a distinctive feature of the narratives that present critics'
romanticized stereotype of the fin de siècle variant of the decadent hero. We see him appearing sickly
and know that he will brick himself inside his Decadent castle, imprisoned not by his own physical
drives but by his singularity, as the last of his kind, a dying race, reaching the ultimate desire through
pain. Ultimately, whatever the scope of decadence may be, critics feel comfortable in using the term
whenever the "decadent" hero is tortured by the realization of his un-divine essence.

In its most general usage, the term "decadence" is defined as "as a failure to recognize objective or
timeless values that transcend and give form and direction to individual experience and effort"

As such, the essential condition of decadence is "that of an artist whose symbolist aspirations are
constantly thwarted by a persistent naturalism".
Thus, as I have described, even as early a writer as Chrétien de Troyes' heroes can be considered
decadent in that they fell (in the theological sense of sinning) away from perfection and abridged what
separates us from animals.