This book is the first comprehensive study of the reception of classical Greece among English aesthetic writers of the nineteenth century. By exploring this history of reception, the book aims to give readers a new and fuller understanding of literary aestheticism, its intellectual contexts, and its challenges to mainstream Victorian culture.
Author(s): Stefano-Maria Evangelista
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2009
Language: English
Pages: 240
Cover......Page 1
Contents......Page 8
List of Figures......Page 10
Acknowledgements......Page 11
Introduction: The Origins......Page 14
The afterlife of Greece: Rome to the Romantics......Page 19
Victorian Greece: social and intellectual background......Page 22
The enemies of Greece......Page 25
1 Pater, 'Winckelmann', and the Aesthetic Life......Page 36
Winckelmann and the rise of modern Hellenism......Page 39
Pater's Winckelmann......Page 44
Paganism and Christianity: Pater and Arnold......Page 49
Dionysus and Other Studies......Page 55
The aesthetic life......Page 58
2 Vernon Lee and the Aesthetics of Doubt......Page 68
The child among the statues......Page 69
The woman among the aesthetes......Page 78
Lee's un-aesthetic 1880s......Page 81
Women classicists: an intellectual context......Page 88
Spectral classicism......Page 94
The epilogue......Page 101
3 'Two Dear Greek Women': The Aesthetic Ecstasy of Michael Field......Page 106
Aesthetic beginnings......Page 109
Sapphic aestheticism......Page 113
Bacchic aestheticism......Page 124
4 The Greek Life of Oscar Wilde......Page 138
The aesthetic education: Pater and Symonds......Page 142
The cry of Marsyas......Page 152
Aesthetic Hellenism......Page 156
Eros and philosophy......Page 161
Conclusion: The End of Aestheticism – A Dream, Three Trials, Two Ghosts......Page 171
Notes......Page 179
Bibliography......Page 199
B......Page 209
F......Page 210
H......Page 211
M......Page 212
P......Page 213
R......Page 214
V......Page 215
Z......Page 216
