Title: Literature in Walter Pater's architectural analogy
Source document: Brno studies in English. 2013, vol. 39, iss. 1, pp. [183]-198
Extent
[183]-198
-
ISSN0524-6881 (print)1805-0867 (online)
Persistent identifier (DOI): https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2013-1-10
Stable URL (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/129158
Type: Article
Language
License: Not specified license
Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.
Abstract(s)
In his great essay "Style," Walter Pater proposes principles for writing good literature, to indicate, eventually, how "good" differs from "great." Interpreting "Style" in a broad context of Pater's other writings, this paper explores his imagery of the physicality of language, linguistic "archeology," writing as architecture and as music. It argues that, in his later years, Pater uses the architectural, rather than musical, analogy when speaking about the function of literature. By likening literature to architecture, Pater presents his ideals of frugality in rhetoric and usefulness of literature, the latter constituting a feature of "great" works. While examining the aesthetic and ethical implications of Pater's literature-architecture parallel, this paper seeks to demonstrate that Pater is pragmatic in his emphasis on the functionality of literature. It shows that Pater, though recognized as the mentor to decadent aesthetes, actually promotes art "for humanity" rather than only art "for art's sake."
References
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[25] Shuter, William F. (2005) Rereading Walter Pater. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[26] Tanner, Stephen L. (2005) "The Moral and the Aesthetical: Literary Study and the Social Order". In: George, Stephen K. (ed.) Ethics, Literature, Theory. New York and Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 115–128.
[2] Burke, Kenneth (1973) The Philosophy of Literary Form: Studies in Symbolic Action. Berkeley, LA: University of California Press.
[3] Conlon, John J. (1982) "Eliot and Pater: Criticism in Transition". English Literature in Transition 25, 169–177.
[4] Donoghue, Denis (1995) Lover of Strange Souls. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
[5] Dowling, Linda (1986) Language and Decadence in the Victorian Fin de Siècle. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
[6] Eliot, T. S. (1950) Poetry and Drama. The Theodore Spencer Memorial Lecture. Harvard University. November 21, 1950. London: Faber and Faber.
[7] Eliot, T. S. (1976a) "Arnold and Pater". Selected Essays. London: Faber and Faber, 431–443.
[8] Eliot, T. S. (1976b) "Religion and Literature". Selected Essays. London: Faber and Faber, 388–401.
[9] Eliot, T. S. (1977) The Complete Poems and Plays. London: Book Club Associates.
[10] Joyce, James (1972) A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
[11] Kirk, Richard R. (1920) "A Sentence by Walter Pater". The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 19 (3), 365–376. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27701015. Accessed on 24.01.2013.
[12] Kistler, Jordan (2012) "'I Carve the Marble of Pure Thought': Work and Production in the Poetry of Arthur O'Shaughnessy." Victorian Network 4 (1) http://www.victoriannetwork.org/index.php/vn/article/view/32. Accessed on 06.03.2013.
[13] Lyas, Colin (2003) "Art, expression and morality". In: Bermúdez, José Louis and Sebastian Gardner (eds.) Art and Morality. London: Routledge, 277–294.
[14] McGrath, F. C. (1986) The Sensible Spirit. Walter Pater and the Modernist Paradigm. Tampa: University Presses of Florida.
[15] Monsman, Gerald Cornelius (1971) "Pater's Aesthetic Hero". University of Toronto Quarterly 40, 136–151.
[16] O'Shaughnessy, Arthur (1882) "Song of a Fellow Worker". In: Charlotte Fiske Bates (ed.) The Cambridge Book of Poetry and Song. New York: T.Y. Crowell & Company, 404–405.
[17] Pater, Walter (1909) Plato and Platonism: A Series of Lectures. London: Macmillan.
[18] Pater, Walter (1910) Miscellaneous Studies. London: Macmillan.
[19] Pater, Walter (1929) Imaginary Portraits. London: Macmillan.
[20] Pater, Walter (1987) Appreciations. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press.
[21] Pater, Walter (1998) The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry. Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[22] Perlis. Alan, D. (1980) "Beyond Epiphany: Pater's Aesthetic Hero in the Works of Joyce". James Joyce Quarterly 17, 272–279.
[23] Powell, Kerry (1983) "Tom, Dick, and Dorian Gray: Magic Picture Mania in Late Victorian Fiction". Philological Quarterly 62, 147–170.
[24] Richards, Bernard (1991) "Pater and Architecture". In: Brake, Laurel and Ian Small (eds.) Pater in the 1990s. 1880-1920 British Authors Ser. 6. Greensboro: ELT, 189–204.
[25] Shuter, William F. (2005) Rereading Walter Pater. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[26] Tanner, Stephen L. (2005) "The Moral and the Aesthetical: Literary Study and the Social Order". In: George, Stephen K. (ed.) Ethics, Literature, Theory. New York and Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 115–128.