Walter Pater: Individualism and Aesthetic Philosophy

Explores how Walter Pater and his contemporary aesthetes were influenced by modern philosophies

Repositioning Walter Pater at the philosophical nexus of Aestheticism, this study presents the first discussion of how Pater redefines Romantic Individualism through his engagements with modern philosophical discourses and in the context of emerging modernity in Britain. It also considers the dynamics between form and thought at the fin de siècle, contextualizing its comments in terms of Matthew Arnold, Oscar Wilde and Vernon Lee and others, to offer a fully integrated account of the intellectual cultures and currents in this period.

Key Features:

• Boldly reassesses Pater's intellectual significance, arguing that he self-consciously poised on the cusp between late-Victorian Romanticism and Modernism
• Imaginatively combines close readings with cultural and intellectual history and biography to reconsider individualism and philosophical thought in the Aesthetic 'Movement'
• Provides the most substantial scholarly engagement with Pater's unpublished manuscripts (held at the Houghton Library, Harvard University)

Author: Kate Hext
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Published: 06/14/2013
Pages: 256
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 9.40h x 6.50w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9780748646258

About the Author

Kate Hext is a lecturer in English at the University of Exeter. She has written widely on aestheticism and the relationship between literature and philosophy in the nineteenth century.