Strangeness and Beauty: Volume 1, Ruskin to Swinburne
Strangeness and Beauty: Volume 1, Ruskin to Swinburne

Author: Eric Warner

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1983-04-07

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9780521238953

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This is a two-volume anthology of criticism of art and literature from approximately 1840 to 1910. The central purpose of the anthology is to show how Romantic ideas of art and imagination were transformed by a number of writers in the nineteenth century and became the fundamental premisses of modernist aesthetics. Volume 1 begins with the development of the Romantic idea of the artist-critic as preacher in the work of Ruskin, whose aim was very much that of this Romantic forebears, Blake and Wordsworth: to awaken humanity to a greater spiritual perception. The volume also concerns itself with the transformation of this in works such as Arthur Hallam's essay on his friend Tennyson, which is central to the writing of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and with the development of French Romanticism into the influential aesthetic movement of Symbolism in the work of Gautier and Baudelaire. The volumes comprise general introductions and introduction to individual extracts, full annotation and helpful guides to further reading.

The Artist as Divine Symbol
The Artist as Divine Symbol

Author: Adam Edward Carnehl

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2023-10-09

Total Pages: 151

ISBN-13: 1666763071

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In critical yet appreciative dialogue with four different art critics who demonstrated theological sensitivities, Adam Edward Carnehl traces an ongoing religious conversation that ran through nineteenth-century aesthetics. In Carnehl's estimation, this critical conversation between the John Ruskin, Walter Pater, and Oscar Wilde, culminated in the brilliant approach of G. K. Chesterton, who began his journalistic career with a series of insightful works of art criticism. By conducting a close reading of these largely neglected works, Carnehl demonstrates that Chesterton developed a theological aesthetic that focuses us on the revelation of God's image in every human being. In Chesterton's eyes, only those made in God's image can produce images themselves, and only those who receive a revelation of truth are able to reveal truths for others. Art is therefore a rich and symbolic unveiling of the truth of humanity which finds its origin and purpose in God the Divine Artist.

Towards Creative Imagination in Victorian Literature
Towards Creative Imagination in Victorian Literature

Author: Aleksandra Piasecka

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2014-06-19

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 1443861987

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This book explores the concept of the creative imagination in Mid- and Late Victorian England. In these times of transition, as the age of the Industrial Revolution was regarded, aesthetic considerations became involved in the broader debate on the shape of the modern world. Thus, the approach to the artistic imagination was closely connected with the shifting beliefs concerning the essence of beauty, and the role of religion, not to mention attitudes towards nature and society. These aspects defined the aims furthered by painters and poets alike and set the direction for their artistic endeavours. Five people have been chosen as representatives of their time in the discussion about artistic imagination: John Ruskin, William Morris, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Walter Pater and Arthur Symons. Accordingly, the material analysed to recreate the Victorian understanding of the artistic faculties is of different kinds, and embraces not only critical essays (Ruskin, Pater, Symons), but also belles-lettres: short stories (Morris) and poems (Rossetti, Symons). In this manner, two positions complement each other: namely, the views of the theoreticians and those of practitioners. The former attempted to discern and extract the quintessence of the artistic powers on the basis of their observations and reflections, whereas the latter relied on their personal experiences in this respect.

"Elizabeth Robins Pennell, Nineteenth-Century Pioneer of Modern Art Criticism "

Author: KimberlyMorse Jones

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 1351568450

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Mining various archives and newspaper repositories, Elizabeth Robins Pennell, Nineteenth-Century Pioneer of Modern Art Criticism provides the first full-length study of a remarkable woman and heretofore neglected art critic. Pennell, a prolific 'New Art Critic', helped formulate and develop formalist methodology in Britain at the end of the nineteenth century, which she applied to her mostly anonymous or pseudonymous reviews published in numerous American and British newspapers and periodicals between 1883 and 1923. A bibliography of her art criticism is included as an appendix. In addition to advocating an advanced way in which to view art, Pennell used her platform to promote the work of ?new? artists, including ?ouard Manet and Edgar Degas, which had only recently been introduced to British audiences. In particular, Pennell championed the work of James McNeill Whistler for whom she, along with her husband, the artist Joseph Pennell, wrote a biography. Examination of her contributions to the late Victorian art world also highlights the pivotal role of criticism in the production and consumption of art in general, a point which is often ignored.

Arthur O'Shaughnessy, A Pre-Raphaelite Poet in the British Museum
Arthur O'Shaughnessy, A Pre-Raphaelite Poet in the British Museum

Author: Jordan Kistler

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-02-26

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 1317178297

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Arthur O'Shaughnessy's career as a natural historian in the British Museum, and his consequent preoccupation with the role of work in his life, provides the context with which to reexamine his contributions to Victorian poetry. O'Shaughnessy's engagement with aestheticism, socialism, and Darwinian theory can be traced to his career as a Junior Assistant at the British Museum, and his perception of the burden of having to earn a living outside of art. Making use of extensive archival research, Jordan Kistler demonstrates that far from being merely a minor poet, O'Shaughnessy was at the forefront of later Victorian avant-garde poetry. Her analyses of published and unpublished writings, including correspondence, poetic manuscripts, and scientific notebooks, demonstrate O'Shaughnessy's importance to the cultural milieu of the 1870s, particularly his contributions to English aestheticism, his role in the importation of decadence from France, and his unique position within contemporary debates on science and literature.

Collecting Objects / Excluding People
Collecting Objects / Excluding People

Author: Lenore Metrick-Chen

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 2012-09-17

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 1438443250

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Combining aesthetic and political history, explores the influence of Chinese people and objects on American visual culture. In Collecting Objects / Excluding People, Lenore Metrick-Chen demonstrates an unknown impact of Chinese immigration upon nineteenth-century American art and visual culture. The American ideas of Chineseness ranged from a negative portrayal to an admiring one and these varied images had an effect on museum art collections and advertising images. They brought new ideas into American art theory, anticipating twentieth-century Modernism. Metrick-Chen shows that efforts to construct a cultural democracy led to the creation of unforeseen new categories for visual objects and unanticipated social changes. Collecting Objects / Excluding People reveals the power of images upon culture, the influence of media representation upon the lives of Chinese immigrants, and the impact of political ideology upon the definition of art itself.

English Prose of the Nineteenth Century
English Prose of the Nineteenth Century

Author: Hilary Fraser

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-12

Total Pages: 413

ISBN-13: 1315505355

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Hilary Fraser provides a comprehensive and thorough survey of English prose in the nineteenth century which draws from a wide variety of fields including art, literary theory and criticisim, biography, letters, journals, sermons, and travel reportage. Through these works the cultural, social, literary and political life of the twentieth century - a period of great intellectual activity - can be charted, discussed and assessed. For the first time, an inclusive critical survey of nineteenth-century non-fiction is presented, that traces the century's ideological and cultural upheavals as they are registered in the literary textures of some of its most widely read and influential writings.The book explores the relations between writers who are generally perceived as occupying different discursive spheres, for example between John Stuart Mill, Florence Nightingale and Mrs Beeton; between Cardinal Newman, Elizabeth Gaskell and Hannah Cullwick; and between Charles Darwin, David Livingstone and Henry Mayhew. The establishment and development of different genres and their interactions over the century are clearly mapped. The genre of the periodical essay, a distinctively modern and flexible form catering to the mass readership, is the subject of the introduction, and then more specialist fields are discussed, covering scientific writing, travel and exploration literature, social reportage, biography, autobiography, journals, letters, religious and philosophical prose, political writing and history.

Theories of Reading
Theories of Reading

Author: Karin Littau

Publisher: Polity

Published: 2006-12-04

Total Pages: 207

ISBN-13: 0745616593

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Why do literary theorists see reading as an act of dispassionate textual analysis and meaning production, when historical evidence shows that readers have often read excessively, obsessively, and for sensory stimulation? Posing these and other questions, this is the first major work to bring insights from book history to bear on literary history and theory. In so doing, the book charts a compelling and innovative history of theories of reading. While literary theorists have greatly contributed to our understanding of the text-reader relation, they have rarely taken into account that the relation between a book and a reader is also a relation between two bodies: one made of paper and ink, the other flesh and blood. This is why, Karin Littau argues, we need to look beyond the words on the page, and pay attention to the technical innovations in the physical format of the book. Only then is it possible to understand more fully how media technology has changed our experience of reading, and why media history presents a challenge to our conceptions of what reading is. Each chapter places the reader in specific disciplinary and historical contexts: literature, criticism, philosophy, cultural history, bibliography, film, new media. Overall, the history recounted in this book points to a split between modern literary study which regards reading as a reducibly mental activity, and a tradition reaching back to antiquity which assumed that reading was not only about sense-making but also about sensation. Theories of Reading: Books, Bodies and Bibliomania will be essential reading for all students and scholars of literary theory and history as well as of great interest to students of the history of the book and new media.

Art and the Higher Life
Art and the Higher Life

Author: Kathleen Pyne

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2010-07-22

Total Pages: 582

ISBN-13: 0292786042

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Late in the nineteenth century, many Americans were troubled by the theories of Charles Darwin, which contradicted both traditional Christian teachings and the idea of human supremacy over nature, and by an influx of foreign immigrants, who challenged the supremacy of the old Anglo-Saxon elite. In response, many people drew comfort from the theories of philosopher Herbert Spencer, who held that human society inevitably develops towards higher and more spiritual forms. In this illuminating study, Kathleen Pyne explores how Spencer’s theories influenced a generation of American artists. She shows how the painters of the 1880s and 1890s, particularly John La Farge, James McNeill Whistler, Thomas Dewing and the Boston school, and the impressionist painters of the Ten, developed an art dedicated to social refinement and spiritual ideals and to defending the Anglo-Saxon elite of which they were members. This linking of visual culture to the problematic conditions of American life radically reinterprets the most important trends in late nineteenth-century American painting.