Francesca Penchant's Blog

Top 5 Decadent Roman Emperors

Mosaic from the 1976 BBC show I, Claudius

Many years ago, my parents and I marveled at the Roman emperors depicted on the award-winning BBC television drama I, Claudius (1976), based on Robert Graves’s novel of the same name and re-aired by PBS in the eighties. Oh, how naive we were in those halcyon days of 1986 BT.

Nowadays, I still revel in imperial SPQR outrageousness by reading such books as Mary Beard’s Emperor of Rome and The Dedalus Book of Roman Decadence: Emperors of Debauchery. In fact, ...

Top 5 Decadent Novels

Des Esseintes at Study (1931), Zaidenberg’s illustration of Joris-Karl Huysmans’s main character in Against Nature.

Often I am asked to cite my “Top Ten” classic French decadent novels—at least I wish I were. In preparation for that day, I have compiled a definitive list in chronological order. There are countless decadent novels, but these are the ones that I have read and enjoyed multiple times, and expect to appreciate even more as time goes on.

Dangerous Liaisons (Les Liaisons dangereuses)

Chod...

Infinite Mysteries

Storefront of Parisian gourmet tea company Mariage Frères, experts in the art of tea-making

Here are five decadent things worth sharing:

Word of the Week

arcana (noun)
singular ar·​ca·​num är-ˈkā-nəm 

plural arcana är-ˈkā-nə 

a: mysterious or specialized knowledge, language, or information accessible or possessed only by the initiate—usually used in plural
b: elixir

Little by little, the arcana of this art, the most neglected of all, had been revealed to Des Esseintes, who could now decipher its languag...

Benighted Travelers

@Joel-Peter Witken/Bruce Silverstein Gallery

Here are five decadent things worth sharing:

Word of the Week

benighted (noun)
be·​night·​ed, bē-
(adjective)
a. overtaken by darkness or night
Benighted travelers, from markets and from fairs, have seen his midnight candle glimmering. —W. B. Yeats (1928)

b. existing in a state of intellectual, moral, or social darkness

Detail of Carlo Gesualdo from an altarpiece by Giovanni Balducci entitled Il Perdono di Gesualdo (1609).

Carlo Gesualdo (1566–1613) was an Ital...

Grotesqueries

Mounted beetle for sale at Paxton Gate, San Francisco.

Here are five decadent things worth sharing:

Word of the Week

grotesquerie (noun)
grō-ˈte-skə-rē
: something that is grotesque: fanciful, bizarre, or incongruous. Something departing markedly from the natural, the expected, or the typical. Example sentence: Born Joseph Merrick, the so-called Elephant Man was exhibited as a sideshow grotesquerie.

Contes cruels (cruel tales) are stories that focus on the dark side of human behavior—on aberrant bodie...

Slightly Disreputable in an Attractive Manner

Traditional absinthe glass with serving-size reservoir, slotted spoon, and sugar cube. Pouring water over the cube will dilute and louche the spirit. Illustration by Francesca Penchant.

Here are five decadent things worth sharing:

Word of the Week

louche
ˈlüsh
(adjective)
a. Of questionable taste or morality; decadent
b. Not reputable or decent
c. Unconventional and slightly disreputable in an attractive manner; raffish, rakish

Why do we remember the witty and glamorous Wilde, and forget the Machiavellia...

Street Haunting

Woman with white gloves and a pocket book, N.Y.C. 1956 (detail) by Diane Arbus. ©The Estate of Diane Arbus, LLC; all rights reserved.

Here are five decadent things worth sharing:

Word of the Week

flaneuse (noun)
fla-¦nərz, -¦nə̄z
: a woman who is or who behaves like a flaneur, an idle man-about-town
Example sentence: Flaneuse Virginia Woolf wrote about walking through London in her 1927 essay "Street Haunting.”

Speaking of flaneuses, the book Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Ven...

Rachilde, Homme de Lettres

Illustration of the author Rachilde (1860–1953) by Francesca Penchant.

Here are five decadent things worth sharing:

Word of the Week

dandiacal (adjective)
dan-ˈdī-ə-kəl
: of, relating to, or suggestive of a dandy
Example sentence: Florian was a dandiacal man-about-town.

Speaking of dandies, the most famous dandy is Beau Brummel (1778–1840). Known for his minimal and immaculate uniform of a white shirt, navy coat, and tan trousers, he ended his days poor and friendless in France (where scandalized Engl...

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