Épater la bourgeoisie

"Épater la bourgeoisie" or "épater le bourgeois" is a French phrase that became a rallying cry for the French Decadent poets of the late 19th century including Baudelaire and Rimbaud. [ [http://www.english.uwosh.edu/roth/Decadence.htm Decadence ] ] It means "to shock the middle-classes" or "to shock the middle-class person" respectively [ [http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/epater%20les%20bourgeois Merriam-Webster OnLine] ] .

The Decadents, through their fascination with such drugs as hashish and opium and a taste for 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 Decadent artists as well as the Aesthetes in England, such as Oscar Wilde, sought to shock the middle class. This celebration of "unhealthy" and "unnatural" devotion to life, art, and excess has been a continuing cultural theme.

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