Épater la bourgeoisie

Épater la bourgeoisie or épater le (or les) bourgeois is a French phrase that became a rallying cry for the French Decadent poets of the late 19th century including Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud. It means "to shock or scandalise the (respectable) middle classes." The term bourgeoisie does not mean middle class in the modern sense, but refers to the owning class under capitalism. As such, it was the middle class between peasantry and aristocracy when emerging in the Late Middle Ages.

The Decadents, fascinated as they were with hashish, opium, and absinthe, found, in Joris-Karl Huysmans' novel À rebours (1884), a sexually perverse hero who secludes himself in his house, basking in life-weariness or ennui, far from the bourgeois society that he despises.

The Aesthetes in England, such as Oscar Wilde, shared these same fascinations. This celebration of "unhealthy" and "unnatural" devotion to art and excess has been a continuing cultural theme.

Later, Dada and Surrealism pursued the same intent.