Walter Pater and the Beginnings of English Studies

The first collected study of Pater's significance to criticism, revealing his pivotal role in establishing principles of the literary essay.

Charles Martindale (Edited by), Elizabeth Prettejohn (Edited by), Lene Østermark-Johansen (Edited by)

9781108835893, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 9 November 2023

332 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 2.3 cm, 0.62 kg

Walter Pater's significance for the institutionalization of English studies at British universities in the nineteenth century is often overlooked. Addressing the importance of his volume Appreciations (1889) in placing English literature in both a national and an international context, this book demonstrates the indebtedness of the English essay to the French tradition and brings together the classic, the Romantic, the English and the European. With essays on drama, prose, and poetry, from Shakespeare and Browne, to Lamb, Coleridge, Wordsworth and Pater's contemporaries Rossetti and Morris, Appreciations exemplifies ideals of aesthetic criticism formulated in Pater's first book, Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873). Subjectivity pervades Pater's essays on the English authors, while bringing out their exceptional qualities in a manner reaching far into twentieth-century criticism. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

Preface
Introduction: Pater and english literature Charles Martindale and Elizabeth Prettejohn
Introduction to Part I: Part I. General: 1. 'Of the true family of Montaigne': appreciations and the essay tradition in english literature Kenneth Daley
2. Unravelling Pater's english poet: the imaginary portrait as criticism Lene Østermark-Johansen
3. Pater's Montaigne and the selfish reader Fergus McGhee
4. Studies in European literature: Pater's cosmopolitan criticism Stefano Evangelista
5. The 'Postscript' Ross Wilson
6. Form, matter, and metaphysics in Walter Pater's essay on 'Style' Michael D. Hurley
7. Walter Pater, second-hand stylist Scarlett Baron
Introduction to Part II: Part II. Individual authors: early moderns, romantics, contemporaries: 8. Pater's Shakespeare Alex Wong
9. Pater and the quaintness of seventeenth-century english prose Kathryn Murphy
10. 'Spiritual Form': Walter Pater's encounters with William Blake Luisa Calè
11. Pater on Coleridge and Wordsworth Charles W. Mahoney
12. Walter Pater, Charles Lamb and 'the value of reserve' Stacey McDowell
13. Poetry in dilution: Pater, Morris and the future of english Marcus Waithe
14. Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his school Elizabeth Prettejohn
Postscript Stephen Bann
Walter Pater and english studies: a select bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 [DSBF]