Decadentism, Italian artistic movement that derived its name but not all its characteristics from the French and English Decadents, who flourished in the last 10 years of the 19th century. Writers of the Italian movement, which did not have the cohesion usual in such cases, generally reacted to positivism with individual stresses on instinct, the irrational, the subconscious, and the individual as opposed to scientific rationalism and the importance of man en masse.
The writers of the movement—Antonio Fogazzaro, Giovanni Pascoli, Gabriele D’Annunzio, and Italo Svevo—differed greatly from each other in style and philosophical approach, but they all sought a highly subjective picture of society and the world.
The critic Benedetto Croce attacked the movement early in the 20th century. Its reputation was somewhat restored by Walter Binni after World War II, only to fall again under the attack of the Marxist critic Carlo Salinari in the 1960s.