Pater, Walter. (1839 - 1894).
L i f e
- a scholar by training and inclination
- an Oxford University don by profession
W o r k
Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873):
- a collection of essays on Renaissance artists and thinkers
- one of the first serious experiments in art history
- dense style: shaped around relative clauses, phrases, and parentheses
- both offers an argument and withdraws from one
- advocates a refinement of sensation in pursuit of an ultimate truth in Art and Life
- urges for the appreciation of the beautiful which he identifies with the truthful
> influenced Oscar Wilde and W. B. Yeats and inspired the rise of Aestheticism in 1890s
Marius the Epicurean (1885):
- a historical-philosophical novel demonstrating the author's attitudes to art
- as the former work marked by the hesitancy of expression
- concerned with the slow movement of a pagan Roman towards Christian conversion
- the protagonist dies on the road to martyrdom
- conclusion: though he was never formally received into the Church, the Church claims him as one of its own after his death
x but: Marius's personal faith based on "unfolding of beauty and energy in things", i.e. aesthetic rather than religious sentiments
Quote
"Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end."
From Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873).
Basics
(Photo: NNDB com).
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Author
Walter Horatio Pater. (1839 - 1894). British. -
Work
Art critic. Essayist. Novelist. Inspired the 1890s Aestheticism. -
Genres
Late Victorian period. Critical writing. Fiction. Aestheticism. History.
Literature
Abrams, Meyer Howard, ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York: W. W. Norton, 1993.
Barnard, Robert. Stručné dějiny anglické literatury. Praha: Brána, 1997.
Baugh, Albert C. ed. A Literary History of England. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967.
Coote, Stephen. The Penguin Short History of English Literature. London: Penguin, 1993.
Sampson, George. The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1946.
Sanders, Andrew. The Short Oxford History of English Literature. New York: Clarendon Press, 1994.