Glossary + Factoids

Decadent movement

• The Decadent movement was a late 19th-century artistic and literary movement of Western Europe. It flourished in France, but also had devotees in England and throughout Europe, as well as in the United States.
• Decadence was the name given, originally by hostile critics, to several late nineteenth-century writers who valued artifice more than the earlier Romantics’ naïve descriptions.

Tetrarch

1. a governor of the fourth part of a province
2. a subordinate prince

Vulnerable

1. definition: capable of being physically or emotionally wounded
2. open to attack or damage : assailable <vulnerable to criticism>

• etymology: c. 1600, from Late Latin vulnerabilis “wounding,” from Latin vulnerare “to wound, hurt, injure, maim,” from vulnus (genitive vulneris) “wound,” perhaps related to vellere “pluck, to tear” (see svelte), or from PIE *wele-nes-, from *wele- (2) “to strike, wound”