Charles Martindale
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199288076
- eISBN:
- 9780191713439
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199288076.003.0005
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter proposes an aesthetic model, derived from Kant's Critique of Judgement, for how translation might operate in relation to a classic text (as an alternative to the standard ...
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This chapter proposes an aesthetic model, derived from Kant's Critique of Judgement, for how translation might operate in relation to a classic text (as an alternative to the standard political/institutional model); it takes as its focus Dryden's translations of Ovid. It first sets out what an aesthetic theory of translation might involve, arguing that it can disrupt the hierarchical assumptions of other theories. Particular use is made of writings from within English Aestheticism by D. G. Rossetti and Walter Pater as well as of Dryden's own theories of translation. Then, by a detailed examination of Dryden's version of Ovid's Io, the chapter gives an example of what a ‘beautiful’ translation might look like and how its beauty might be described.Less
This chapter proposes an aesthetic model, derived from Kant's Critique of Judgement, for how translation might operate in relation to a classic text (as an alternative to the standard political/institutional model); it takes as its focus Dryden's translations of Ovid. It first sets out what an aesthetic theory of translation might involve, arguing that it can disrupt the hierarchical assumptions of other theories. Particular use is made of writings from within English Aestheticism by D. G. Rossetti and Walter Pater as well as of Dryden's own theories of translation. Then, by a detailed examination of Dryden's version of Ovid's Io, the chapter gives an example of what a ‘beautiful’ translation might look like and how its beauty might be described.
Marion Thain
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781474415668
- eISBN:
- 9781474426855
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474415668.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This book analyses the remaking of lyric poetry in Victorian modernity, challenging and transforming existing narratives of the modern formation of the ‘lyric’ genre through engagement with a body of ...
More
This book analyses the remaking of lyric poetry in Victorian modernity, challenging and transforming existing narratives of the modern formation of the ‘lyric’ genre through engagement with a body of work that larger-scale genre histories elide. As cultural and philosophical shifts were challenging the fundamental generic identity of ‘lyric’, aestheticist poets seemed to turn insistently to forms from the past. Yet might those antique forms be understood in relation to the pressures of modernity? How might they have been used to reimagine lyric‘s presence in the modern world? This book argues that aestheticist poetry (c. 1860 to 1914) responds profoundly to the crisis of lyric’s relevance to a rapidly modernizing age, not in spite of these forms but through them. Setting its focal poetry within broader conceptual frames, and featuring innovative analysis of both recently rediscovered and canonical works, this study asks us to reimagine the relationship between poetry and modernity. The book provides three fresh frames through which to do this, and includes case studies featuring A. C. Swinburne, D. G. Rossetti, Alice Meynell, Thomas Hardy, Arthur Symons, Ezra Pound, and a host of other Decadent and aestheticist voices.Less
This book analyses the remaking of lyric poetry in Victorian modernity, challenging and transforming existing narratives of the modern formation of the ‘lyric’ genre through engagement with a body of work that larger-scale genre histories elide. As cultural and philosophical shifts were challenging the fundamental generic identity of ‘lyric’, aestheticist poets seemed to turn insistently to forms from the past. Yet might those antique forms be understood in relation to the pressures of modernity? How might they have been used to reimagine lyric‘s presence in the modern world? This book argues that aestheticist poetry (c. 1860 to 1914) responds profoundly to the crisis of lyric’s relevance to a rapidly modernizing age, not in spite of these forms but through them. Setting its focal poetry within broader conceptual frames, and featuring innovative analysis of both recently rediscovered and canonical works, this study asks us to reimagine the relationship between poetry and modernity. The book provides three fresh frames through which to do this, and includes case studies featuring A. C. Swinburne, D. G. Rossetti, Alice Meynell, Thomas Hardy, Arthur Symons, Ezra Pound, and a host of other Decadent and aestheticist voices.
Charles Martindale, Stefano Evangelista, and Elizabeth Prettejohn (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780198723417
- eISBN:
- 9780191790058
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198723417.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Prose and Writers: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This is the first book to address in detail Walter Pater’s important contribution to the study of classical antiquity. Pater is our greatest aesthetic critic. He was also a professional classicist ...
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This is the first book to address in detail Walter Pater’s important contribution to the study of classical antiquity. Pater is our greatest aesthetic critic. He was also a professional classicist who lectured and gave tutorials at the University of Oxford, and participated in many of the debates fostered by Classics as an academic discipline, a point often downplayed. Yet Pater’s aestheticism and his interests as a classicist went closely together. One might say that the classical tradition in its broadest sense (including the question of how to understand its workings and temporalities) is Pater’s principal subject as a writer. Pater initially approached antiquity obliquely (for example, through the Italian Renaissance or the poetry of William Morris). Later in his career he wrote more, and more directly, about the ancient world, particularly about his first love Greece. Pater’s conception of Classics was cross-disciplinary, outward-looking, and pan-European, and thus a potential model for Classics today. The Pater who emerges is a many-sided, inspirational figure, with a message for today, whose achievement helped to reinvigorate the classical studies that were the very basis of the English educational system of the nineteenth century. The four parts of the book discuss his classicism generally, his fiction set in classical antiquity (especially Marius the Epicurean), his writings on Greek literature and culture, and on ancient philosophy, especially the works of of Plato. The wider Victorian context is also illuminated, and other figures discussed include J. A. Symonds, Henry Nettleship, Vernon Lee, and Jane Harrison.Less
This is the first book to address in detail Walter Pater’s important contribution to the study of classical antiquity. Pater is our greatest aesthetic critic. He was also a professional classicist who lectured and gave tutorials at the University of Oxford, and participated in many of the debates fostered by Classics as an academic discipline, a point often downplayed. Yet Pater’s aestheticism and his interests as a classicist went closely together. One might say that the classical tradition in its broadest sense (including the question of how to understand its workings and temporalities) is Pater’s principal subject as a writer. Pater initially approached antiquity obliquely (for example, through the Italian Renaissance or the poetry of William Morris). Later in his career he wrote more, and more directly, about the ancient world, particularly about his first love Greece. Pater’s conception of Classics was cross-disciplinary, outward-looking, and pan-European, and thus a potential model for Classics today. The Pater who emerges is a many-sided, inspirational figure, with a message for today, whose achievement helped to reinvigorate the classical studies that were the very basis of the English educational system of the nineteenth century. The four parts of the book discuss his classicism generally, his fiction set in classical antiquity (especially Marius the Epicurean), his writings on Greek literature and culture, and on ancient philosophy, especially the works of of Plato. The wider Victorian context is also illuminated, and other figures discussed include J. A. Symonds, Henry Nettleship, Vernon Lee, and Jane Harrison.
Michele Mendelssohn
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748623853
- eISBN:
- 9780748651634
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748623853.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This book, a sustained reading of Henry James's and Oscar Wilde's relationship, reveals why the antagonisms between these authors are symptomatic of the cultural oppositions within Aestheticism ...
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This book, a sustained reading of Henry James's and Oscar Wilde's relationship, reveals why the antagonisms between these authors are symptomatic of the cultural oppositions within Aestheticism itself. The book also shows how these conflicting energies animated the late nineteenth century's most exciting transatlantic cultural enterprise. Richly illustrated and historically detailed, this study of James's and Wilde's intricate, decades-long relationship brings to light Aestheticism's truly transatlantic nature through close readings of both authors' works, as well as nineteenth-century art, periodicals, rare manuscripts and previously unpublished letters. As this book shows, both nineteenth-century authors were deeply influenced by the visual and decorative arts, and by contemporary artists such as George Du Maurier and James McNeill Whistler. This book offers a nuanced reading of a complex relationship that promises to transform the way in which we imagine late nineteenth-century British and American literary culture.Less
This book, a sustained reading of Henry James's and Oscar Wilde's relationship, reveals why the antagonisms between these authors are symptomatic of the cultural oppositions within Aestheticism itself. The book also shows how these conflicting energies animated the late nineteenth century's most exciting transatlantic cultural enterprise. Richly illustrated and historically detailed, this study of James's and Wilde's intricate, decades-long relationship brings to light Aestheticism's truly transatlantic nature through close readings of both authors' works, as well as nineteenth-century art, periodicals, rare manuscripts and previously unpublished letters. As this book shows, both nineteenth-century authors were deeply influenced by the visual and decorative arts, and by contemporary artists such as George Du Maurier and James McNeill Whistler. This book offers a nuanced reading of a complex relationship that promises to transform the way in which we imagine late nineteenth-century British and American literary culture.
Michèle Mendelssohn
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748623853
- eISBN:
- 9780748651634
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748623853.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This book tells the story of Henry James's and Oscar Wilde's intricate, decades-long literary relationship and how it shaped transatlantic aesthetic relations. It shows that their relationship ...
More
This book tells the story of Henry James's and Oscar Wilde's intricate, decades-long literary relationship and how it shaped transatlantic aesthetic relations. It shows that their relationship allegorises nineteenth-century American and British Aestheticism. It is a parable about two cultures in conflict that stridently externalised their concerns about one another and themselves while quietly internalising each others' values in print, exercising their ideas so that they could strengthen their respective cultures. Aestheticism refers to the literary and artistic movement that flourished in Britain and America between 1870 and 1900 and that advanced art for art's sake in opposition to the utilitarian doctrine of moral or practical usefulness. ‘Aesthetic culture’ indicates a catholic conception of Aestheticism. This book is framed by much larger questions of how Aestheticism was able to span differences as considerable as those between James and Wilde, America and Britain, authenticity and fakery, conventionality and eccentricity, morality and immorality. The ability to maintain these tensions makes transatlantic Aestheticism a bridge over troubled waters in every sense.Less
This book tells the story of Henry James's and Oscar Wilde's intricate, decades-long literary relationship and how it shaped transatlantic aesthetic relations. It shows that their relationship allegorises nineteenth-century American and British Aestheticism. It is a parable about two cultures in conflict that stridently externalised their concerns about one another and themselves while quietly internalising each others' values in print, exercising their ideas so that they could strengthen their respective cultures. Aestheticism refers to the literary and artistic movement that flourished in Britain and America between 1870 and 1900 and that advanced art for art's sake in opposition to the utilitarian doctrine of moral or practical usefulness. ‘Aesthetic culture’ indicates a catholic conception of Aestheticism. This book is framed by much larger questions of how Aestheticism was able to span differences as considerable as those between James and Wilde, America and Britain, authenticity and fakery, conventionality and eccentricity, morality and immorality. The ability to maintain these tensions makes transatlantic Aestheticism a bridge over troubled waters in every sense.
Michèle Mendelssohn
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748623853
- eISBN:
- 9780748651634
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748623853.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter focuses on Henry James's and Oscar Wilde's first documented meeting, in 1882. The tension between British and American culture is the most important aspect of transatlantic Aestheticism, ...
More
This chapter focuses on Henry James's and Oscar Wilde's first documented meeting, in 1882. The tension between British and American culture is the most important aspect of transatlantic Aestheticism, and it is with this issue that this first chapter begins with an analysis of the politics underlying James's early stories of Americans abroad and Wilde's 1882 North American lecture tour. The chapter shows that James was deeply involved in the formulation and advancement of transatlantic Aestheticism and that he knowingly explored the movement's more popular and commercial incarnations. It examines James's early depictions of aesthetes in light of Wilde's self-presentation and George Du Maurier's illustrations for Punch and Washington Square. It shows that James developed, codified, and catalogued aesthetic modes of being long before Wilde entered on the scene, citing his novel Daisy Miller. It also reveals James's vigorous efforts to write an American narrative of Aestheticism's origins, and to create ex post facto a vibrant American prehistory for the ideas that imbued British Aestheticism.Less
This chapter focuses on Henry James's and Oscar Wilde's first documented meeting, in 1882. The tension between British and American culture is the most important aspect of transatlantic Aestheticism, and it is with this issue that this first chapter begins with an analysis of the politics underlying James's early stories of Americans abroad and Wilde's 1882 North American lecture tour. The chapter shows that James was deeply involved in the formulation and advancement of transatlantic Aestheticism and that he knowingly explored the movement's more popular and commercial incarnations. It examines James's early depictions of aesthetes in light of Wilde's self-presentation and George Du Maurier's illustrations for Punch and Washington Square. It shows that James developed, codified, and catalogued aesthetic modes of being long before Wilde entered on the scene, citing his novel Daisy Miller. It also reveals James's vigorous efforts to write an American narrative of Aestheticism's origins, and to create ex post facto a vibrant American prehistory for the ideas that imbued British Aestheticism.
Michèle Mendelssohn
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748623853
- eISBN:
- 9780748651634
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748623853.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
Widely perceived to be an aesthete-for-hire, Oscar Wilde's purpose in the late 1880s and early 1890s was to shed this image and develop his own aesthetic ideals. One of the ways he did this was quite ...
More
Widely perceived to be an aesthete-for-hire, Oscar Wilde's purpose in the late 1880s and early 1890s was to shed this image and develop his own aesthetic ideals. One of the ways he did this was quite literally by putting things between boards. As a result, Wilde transformed himself into a real artist and a professional man of letters. He also reinvented Aestheticism in the process. This metamorphosis was due in no small part to his clashes with the painter James McNeill Whistler, as well as with Henry James. Wilde's systematic assimilation and reformulation of their views suggests that plagiarism and appropriation were integral to Aestheticism's evolution. This chapter explores how Wilde redeveloped Aestheticism through a programmatic assault on Whistler and James. Examined through the lens of his evolving artistic philosophy, Intentions and The Picture of Dorian Gray unequivocally testify to his intention to remodel Aestheticism and to make it over in his own image.Less
Widely perceived to be an aesthete-for-hire, Oscar Wilde's purpose in the late 1880s and early 1890s was to shed this image and develop his own aesthetic ideals. One of the ways he did this was quite literally by putting things between boards. As a result, Wilde transformed himself into a real artist and a professional man of letters. He also reinvented Aestheticism in the process. This metamorphosis was due in no small part to his clashes with the painter James McNeill Whistler, as well as with Henry James. Wilde's systematic assimilation and reformulation of their views suggests that plagiarism and appropriation were integral to Aestheticism's evolution. This chapter explores how Wilde redeveloped Aestheticism through a programmatic assault on Whistler and James. Examined through the lens of his evolving artistic philosophy, Intentions and The Picture of Dorian Gray unequivocally testify to his intention to remodel Aestheticism and to make it over in his own image.
Michèle Mendelssohn
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748623853
- eISBN:
- 9780748651634
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748623853.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
From the mid-1880s to the early 1890s, Oscar Wilde transformed himself into a ‘real artist’ and reinvented Aestheticism in the process by developing an artistic method that was strongly informed by ...
More
From the mid-1880s to the early 1890s, Oscar Wilde transformed himself into a ‘real artist’ and reinvented Aestheticism in the process by developing an artistic method that was strongly informed by his debate with James McNeill Whistler. This chapter reveals that at the same time as Wilde was combatting Whistler, he was also energetically engaged with Henry James. Wilde undervalues the degree to which he and James both adhere to a fictional interpretation of the impressionism Walter Pater advocates in The Renaissance. By repeatedly refining and reforming his impression of James and Whistler, Wilde developed a stronger sense of his own artistic ethos and, by the time he came to write The Picture of Dorian Gray in the autumn of 1889, he had successfully defined an aesthetic approach that incorporated and aimed to supersede that of both James and Whistler. This chapter also discusses Wilde's impressions of James in Intentions.Less
From the mid-1880s to the early 1890s, Oscar Wilde transformed himself into a ‘real artist’ and reinvented Aestheticism in the process by developing an artistic method that was strongly informed by his debate with James McNeill Whistler. This chapter reveals that at the same time as Wilde was combatting Whistler, he was also energetically engaged with Henry James. Wilde undervalues the degree to which he and James both adhere to a fictional interpretation of the impressionism Walter Pater advocates in The Renaissance. By repeatedly refining and reforming his impression of James and Whistler, Wilde developed a stronger sense of his own artistic ethos and, by the time he came to write The Picture of Dorian Gray in the autumn of 1889, he had successfully defined an aesthetic approach that incorporated and aimed to supersede that of both James and Whistler. This chapter also discusses Wilde's impressions of James in Intentions.
Michèle Mendelssohn
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748623853
- eISBN:
- 9780748651634
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748623853.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
Oscar Wilde's vigorous rejection and absorption of James McNeill Whistler and Henry James demonstrates that he reinvented himself and Aestheticism by successfully challenging assumptions about ...
More
Oscar Wilde's vigorous rejection and absorption of James McNeill Whistler and Henry James demonstrates that he reinvented himself and Aestheticism by successfully challenging assumptions about artistic legitimacy. The close of the nineteenth century saw the articulation of a discourse of male homosexuality because of what the public dramatisation of Wilde's trial entailed, and this new idiom of transgressive selfhood is latent in James's Guy Domville and Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. The century's sexual turning point is thus closely intertwined with another crisis in aesthetic culture, as Wilde's trial forever changed the way the movement would be perceived. These plays expose the personal cost of transgression against normative masculinity and their historical context also inscribes this concern into a larger project, namely, Wilde's and James's attempts to represent the effect of transgressive desires and behaviours on identity.Less
Oscar Wilde's vigorous rejection and absorption of James McNeill Whistler and Henry James demonstrates that he reinvented himself and Aestheticism by successfully challenging assumptions about artistic legitimacy. The close of the nineteenth century saw the articulation of a discourse of male homosexuality because of what the public dramatisation of Wilde's trial entailed, and this new idiom of transgressive selfhood is latent in James's Guy Domville and Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. The century's sexual turning point is thus closely intertwined with another crisis in aesthetic culture, as Wilde's trial forever changed the way the movement would be perceived. These plays expose the personal cost of transgression against normative masculinity and their historical context also inscribes this concern into a larger project, namely, Wilde's and James's attempts to represent the effect of transgressive desires and behaviours on identity.
Michèle Mendelssohn
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748623853
- eISBN:
- 9780748651634
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748623853.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
In the early 1880s, Henry James made the transatlantic aesthete his own despite the figure's increasing association with Oscar Wilde. Though James privately dissociated himself from Wilde's artistic, ...
More
In the early 1880s, Henry James made the transatlantic aesthete his own despite the figure's increasing association with Oscar Wilde. Though James privately dissociated himself from Wilde's artistic, sexual and identity politics, vestigial markers remain apparent in James's fiction. In the late 1880s and early 1890s, Wilde situated his art theory in reaction to that of James and James McNeill Whistler, defining an oppositional aesthetic through a process of imaginative review-as-revision that aimed to mitigate Realism's vivisectionist tendencies. This chapter marks the demise of Aestheticism and the beginning of James's decadent turn. First, it analyses the language of puerility and animality that pervades James's and Wilde's interaction. It then charts the manner in which, post-1895, both authors recuperate this idiom to describe an innocent and erotic child of power that radically undermines Aestheticism's moral stance. ‘The Turn of the Screw’ and De Profundis replicate and interrogate the unmitigated state of moral crisis that resulted from Wilde's trial. In this final crisis, both narratives radically reassess Aestheticism's central tenets, particularly its uncoupling of the aesthetic and the moral.Less
In the early 1880s, Henry James made the transatlantic aesthete his own despite the figure's increasing association with Oscar Wilde. Though James privately dissociated himself from Wilde's artistic, sexual and identity politics, vestigial markers remain apparent in James's fiction. In the late 1880s and early 1890s, Wilde situated his art theory in reaction to that of James and James McNeill Whistler, defining an oppositional aesthetic through a process of imaginative review-as-revision that aimed to mitigate Realism's vivisectionist tendencies. This chapter marks the demise of Aestheticism and the beginning of James's decadent turn. First, it analyses the language of puerility and animality that pervades James's and Wilde's interaction. It then charts the manner in which, post-1895, both authors recuperate this idiom to describe an innocent and erotic child of power that radically undermines Aestheticism's moral stance. ‘The Turn of the Screw’ and De Profundis replicate and interrogate the unmitigated state of moral crisis that resulted from Wilde's trial. In this final crisis, both narratives radically reassess Aestheticism's central tenets, particularly its uncoupling of the aesthetic and the moral.
