Comparative Criticism: Volume 17, Walter Pater and the Culture of the Fin-de-Siècle: (Series Number 17 Comparative Criticism)

This volume treats conceptions of the fin-de-siele as they were affected and characterized by the work of Walter Pater, the leading -century English art critic after Ruskin, essayist and novelist, and major influence on the temper and style of the 'aesthetic' and 'decadent' movements. Denis Donoghue recreates the sceptical spirit of Pater for our time; Richard Wollheirn deals with his philosophical claims in relation to his writerly practice; Wolfgang Iser with the 'translatability' of Paterian discourse in the current context of interpretation theory; Nicholas Shrimpton with Pater's place in the 'aesthetical sect'; Billie Inman with the gender role-playing that characterized the 'Grecian' attitude, in particular the mode of 'subservient love', which affected Oscar Wilde and his friends among others. On the larger European scene David Carrier treats the decisive role of Baudelaire in the movement towards Modernism in writing and painting, and the subterranean forms in which he was imported. Stephen Bann sums up the relation of Pater's viewpoints to the nature of representation. The first publication of an important work, believed lost, of Pater's major disciple, the twentieth-century art critic Adrian Stokes, is featured in this volume. Richard Read has found, edited, and introduced Stokes's essay on the artist Pisanello, the first of four essays an the Renaissance Tempio Malatestiano at Rimini. Stokes's complex relationship with Pound at the time of the Cantos is also explored, as Modernists sought to distance themselves from the aesthetic mode in which they had been nurtured. Joseph Farrell examines the relation of the fin-de-siele drama such as Feydeau on Modernist and Absurdist playwrights like Ionesco and Dario Fo, and translates Fo's play Women in the Nude and Bodies in the Post. Simon Curtis, reviewing Jahan Ramazani's Poetry of Mourning. The Modern Elegy from Hardy to Heaney, displays the changing forms of the traditional elegy through the fin-de-siele to the present.

Table of Contents:
List of illustrations; list of contributors; Acknowledgements; Frontispiece: drawing attributed to Leonardo da Vinci; Editor's introduction: century's ends, culture's ends; Part I. Walter Pater and the Culture of the Fin-de-Siècle: 1. The antinomian Pater: 1894–1994 Denis Donoghue; 2. Walter Pater: from philosophy to art Richard Wollheim; 3. Enfoldings in Paterian discourse: modes of translatability Wolfgang Iser; 4. Pater and the 'aesthetical sect' Nicholas Shrimpton; 5. John 'Dorian' Gray and the theme of subservient love in Pater's works of the 1890s Billie Andrew Inman; 6. Baudelaire, Pater and the origins of modernism David Carrier; 7. Epilogue: on the homelessness of the image. With illustrations; Part II. Literature, Translation and Performance: 8. Art criticism versus poetry: an introduction to Adrian Stokes's 'Pisanello' Richard Read; 9. Pisanello. First of four essays on the Tempio Malatestiano at Rimini. With illustrations Adrian Stokes; Section 1. Winners of the 1993 BCLA Translation Competition Open Competition: 10. First prize: 'The ghost of the Jewish ghetto' Paul Leppin: a story translated from the German Michael Mitchell; 11. Second prize: 'The woman who kept a unicorn in the kitchen' Lydia Knecht: a story translated from the Hebrew Asher Harris; 12. Special Prize for Hebrew, Yiddish, Jewish Theme: 'Jews at the well' Franz Theodor Csokor: a story translated from the German Michael Mitchell; 13. Special Prize for Spanish first prize: extract from The Letter from the Wilderness Göran Tunström translation Eivor Martinus; 14. Special prize for Spanish second prize: Women in the Nude and Bodies in the Post Dario Fo: a play translated from the Italian with an introduction: 'Fo, Feydeau and Ionesco: tragic farce and comic farce' Joseph Farrell; Part III. Essay Reviews: On Jahan Ramazani, Poetry of Mourning. The Modern Elegy from Hardy to Heaney Simon Curtis; Compilation of books and periodicals received Seán Matthews; Compiled bibliography of comparative literature in Great Britain and Ireland 1991 Nicholas Crowe.