Considered to be the highest paid journalist and certainly one of the most scandalous writers of fin de siècle Paris, Jean Lorrain spent over thirty years carefully documenting high and low cultural life through writings as diverse as chronicles and gossip columns, poems, novels, plays, songs, tales and short stories. His polymorphous oeuvre can be seen as the transition from Symbolism and Decadence to twentieth century literature. Self-proclaimed “le fanfaron du vice” [the braggart of vice] (Rachilde, Portraits d’hommes [Portraits of men], 77), Lorrain was a complex literary figure. Recurring topics in his work and life include masks and disguises, hybridity, homosexuality, Satanism, h…

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Citation: Burin, Alexandre. "Jean Lorrain". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 16 December 2016 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=13814, accessed 25 November 2024.]

13814 Jean Lorrain 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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