The conventional use of words and of narrative structure is deliberately subverted in decadent fiction; language deviates from the established norms in an attempt to reproduce pathology on a textual level. With its emphasis on aberration and artifice, the decadents' approach to the language of fiction frequently leans towards the baroque and the obscure.
Asti Hustvedt, The Decadent Reader: Fiction, Fantasy, and Perversion from Fin-de-Siècle France
baroque, decadence, decadent, language, literature, obscure