ABSTRACT
In the nineteenth century, a new mode of aestheticism developed and became popular in Europe, and with it came an unusual and (purposely) perverse take on the meaning of innocence. Following in the wake of Kantian aesthetic thought and new modes of European romanticism, this aestheticism privileged experiences of subjectivity and reversed or transformed numerous paradigms in the appreciation of fine art. It also shifted the boundaries by which artistic experience was demarcated. The aesthetic, we might say, began to spill over into the everyday in new and possibly troubling ways. This movement reached a point of culmination in fin-de-siècle decadentism. At the far end of an aesthetic trajectory obsessed with subjectivity, the decadents represent a profound inversion of the discourse on innocence. Their aesthetic perspective envisions innocence as a means of seduction, corruption, and perverse self-reflection. Innocence thus takes on a pivotal role in their project to draw together the sacred and the profane in their search for new, and shocking, sources of aesthetic experience.
