Paul Verlaine Much of the French poetry produced during the "fin de siècle" was characterized as "decadent" for its lurid content or moral vision. In a similar vein, Verlaine used the expression "poète maudit" ("cursed poet") in 1884 to refer to a number of poets like Stéphane Mallarmé, Arthur Rimbaud, Aloysius Bertrand, Comte de Lautréamont or Alice de Chambrier, who had fought against poetic conventions and suffered social rebuke or were ignored by the critics. But with the publication of Jean Moréas' "Symbolist Manifesto" in 1886, it was the term symbolism which was most often applied to the new literary environment. Along
William Thompson (poet) William Thompson (poet) Rev. William Thompson (1712 - 1766) was an 18th-century English poet. William Thompson was the son of Rev. Francis Thompson, vicar of Brough in Westmoreland, NW England, who died in 1735; William's date of birth is not known. William Thompson studied at Queen's College, Oxford, which his father had also attended, and graduated with a Master of Arts in 1738, afterwards becoming a fellow of the college. Thompson became rector of Hampton Poyle with South Weston in Oxfordshire. He published his collected poems in two volumes in 1757. He is best known for the long poem "Sickness"