The Vulgarization of Art: The Victorians and Aesthetic Democracy

by Linda Dowling

Overview

In this major reinterpretation of the Victorian Aesthetic Movement, Linda Dowling argues that such classic works of Victorian art writing such as Ruskin's Stones of Venice of Morris's Lectures on Art or Wilde's Critic as Artist become wholly intelligible only within the larger ideological context of the Whig aesthetic tradition.

The Vulgarization of Art explores the tragic consequences for the Aesthetic Movement when a repressed and irresolvable conflict between Shaftesbury's assumption of "aristocratic soul" and the Victorian ideal of "aesthetic democracy" repeatedly shatters the hopes of such writers as Ruskin, Morris, Pater, and Wilde for social transformation through the aesthetic sense.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813916347
Publisher:	University of Virginia Press
Publication date:	02/15/1996
Series:	Victorian Literature and Culture Series
Pages:	164
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.25(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Linda Dowling is an Associate Fellow of the Center for Historical Analysis at Rutgers University. She is the author, most recently, of Language and Decadence in the Victorian Fin de Siecle and Hellenism and Homosexuality in Victorian Oxford.

Editorial Reviews

Dowling (history, Rutgers U) contends that the classical works of Victorian criticism and art history can only be understood within the context of a Whig aesthetic tradition. She finds that the democratic aesthetic grew out of a Whig polity that proposed itself as an alternative to older theories of natural law and divine right. Its proponents were hoping to escape the growing nightmare of the industrial landscape through a universal pleasure in art and beauty. The frustrations of such writers as Ruskin, Morris, Pater, and Wilde demonstrate that the attempt failed. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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