This is my thesis in sketched portraits. The first chapter starts with Walter Pater-- the leading figure of a movement known as 'British Aestheticism'-- and moves onto look at Vernon Lee, Henry James and Rebecca West in the chapters that follow. I assess how each writer accounts for public reception in an age marked by fiction's increasing difficulty. I look at debates which structure the discussion of art's social utility in the late-Victorian period through into the early-20th-century. The portraits do have a role to play in my discussion of these debates: the portraits display each writer's authorial persona in a guise which is consonant with their theorization of literary aestheticism. I don't want to go into any more detail here because the thoughts which follow are sizzling in the format of potential publications. Email me if you are have any interest in this, however!
A friend recommended I jot down some of the key words to appear in my thesis (just for fun) and so that might help to give a sense of some of the key things that I am thinking about:
- late-Victorian
-Modernism
-British Aestheticism
-Elitism
-Difficulty
-Style
-Form
-Art-Novel
-Individualism
-Individuality
-Ethics
-Reception
-Reading public
See you soon. The lack of photographic material over the past month has been due to a poorly energized and (now) vanished camera. For example, I spent three days in London where I had a very busy time of British Library, theatre, friends and Hamstead Heath. I took one photograph. When I find my camera, I will upload it. Bear with me.
