J. B. BULLEN
- Published in print:
- 1994
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198128885
- eISBN:
- 9780191671722
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198128885.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Augustus Welby Pugin’s book Contrasts was one of the most famous and controversial contributions to the English Gothic Revival. It was a highly combative work because it viewed architecture and ...
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Augustus Welby Pugin’s book Contrasts was one of the most famous and controversial contributions to the English Gothic Revival. It was a highly combative work because it viewed architecture and architectural history from a Catholic viewpoint at a time when Catholicism, in England, was felt to be a growing threat to the Protestant establishment. It made unwelcome assumptions about the connection between Catholicism and social values. Contrasts appeared in two editions, one in 1836, the other in 1842; perhaps the most interesting difference between them is Pugin’s ‘discovery’ of the Renaissance. The first edition of Contrasts places the responsibility for the depraved state of nineteenth-century English society and English architecture firmly at the door of Protestantism, and it dates that decay from the English Reformation. Pugin’s denunciation of the Reformation in England drew on an established tradition which combined nostalgia for the Middle Ages with contemporary reforming zeal. For Pugin, ‘the renaissance’ is associated with modernism, and by implication with egotism. It suggests not only the rebirth of paganism, but the rebirth of the self and contrasts with the conformity of ‘faith’ and ‘devotion’.Less
Augustus Welby Pugin’s book Contrasts was one of the most famous and controversial contributions to the English Gothic Revival. It was a highly combative work because it viewed architecture and architectural history from a Catholic viewpoint at a time when Catholicism, in England, was felt to be a growing threat to the Protestant establishment. It made unwelcome assumptions about the connection between Catholicism and social values. Contrasts appeared in two editions, one in 1836, the other in 1842; perhaps the most interesting difference between them is Pugin’s ‘discovery’ of the Renaissance. The first edition of Contrasts places the responsibility for the depraved state of nineteenth-century English society and English architecture firmly at the door of Protestantism, and it dates that decay from the English Reformation. Pugin’s denunciation of the Reformation in England drew on an established tradition which combined nostalgia for the Middle Ages with contemporary reforming zeal. For Pugin, ‘the renaissance’ is associated with modernism, and by implication with egotism. It suggests not only the rebirth of paganism, but the rebirth of the self and contrasts with the conformity of ‘faith’ and ‘devotion’.
J. B. BULLEN
- Published in print:
- 1994
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198128885
- eISBN:
- 9780191671722
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198128885.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
The historiography of the Renaissance was turbulent and contentious; it was affected by factors which had more to do with current intellectual interests than the facts of history, and it engaged many ...
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The historiography of the Renaissance was turbulent and contentious; it was affected by factors which had more to do with current intellectual interests than the facts of history, and it engaged many writers who were not historians in any conventional sense of the word. At this stage, however, one thing is clear. The Renaissance is the product of language, of historical discourse, and it is this which permits the use of the term ‘myth’ in the context of Renaissance historiography. This book attempts to answer a number of questions about the myth. Where and in what circumstances did it originate? What was its function in the more general economy of the historiographies of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries? How was it developed, what shape did it take, and how did it stand in relation to contemporary religious and political issues? The book focuses on the works of, among others, Augustus Welby Pugin, John Ruskin, Robert Browning, George Eliot, and Walter Pater. This is the story of the germination, growth, and development of that myth.Less
The historiography of the Renaissance was turbulent and contentious; it was affected by factors which had more to do with current intellectual interests than the facts of history, and it engaged many writers who were not historians in any conventional sense of the word. At this stage, however, one thing is clear. The Renaissance is the product of language, of historical discourse, and it is this which permits the use of the term ‘myth’ in the context of Renaissance historiography. This book attempts to answer a number of questions about the myth. Where and in what circumstances did it originate? What was its function in the more general economy of the historiographies of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries? How was it developed, what shape did it take, and how did it stand in relation to contemporary religious and political issues? The book focuses on the works of, among others, Augustus Welby Pugin, John Ruskin, Robert Browning, George Eliot, and Walter Pater. This is the story of the germination, growth, and development of that myth.
