Rhétoriques « fin de siècle »
‘Fin-de-Siècle’ Rhetorics

Summary/Abstract: Any attempt to define the ‘fin de siècle’ syntagm faces the usual ambiguity of labels. The word ‘fin’ encourages critics to put forth value judgments which translate biological or chronological notions (such as aging, exhaustion, a recurring End of the Century) into aesthetic equivalents. The arbitrary character of such analogies has already been assessed; furthermore, as a consequence of the rising interest in this phenomenon, there is now an entire inventory of so-called ‘decadent’ themes and motifs. Paradoxically, the originality of the ‘fin de siècle’ consists, in our opinion, on the one hand, in its impressive activism, which contradicts its own manifestos, and on the other, in the surprisingly modern rhetoric that this artistic ‘nebula’ produced.

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