Oscar Wilde and the French Decadents

Close reading of Oscar Wilde's work together with major texts and authors of 19th-century French Decadence, including Symbolism, l'art pour l'art, and early Modernism.  Points of contact between Wilde and avant-garde Paris salons; provocative, creative intersections between (homo)erotic and aesthetic styles, transgression; literary and cultural developments from Baudelaire to Mallarmé, Huysmans, Flaubert, Rachilde, Lorrain, and Proust compared with Wilde's Salomé, Picture of Dorian Gray, and critical writings; relevant historical and philosophical contexts.  All readings in English; all student levels welcome.