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 nineteenth-century English art critic after Ruskin, essayist and novelist, and major influence on the temper and style of the 'aesthetic' and 'decadent' movements. Many subjects are explored: Denis Donoghue recreates the sceptical spirit of Pater for our time and Wolfgang Iser with the 'translatability' of Paterian discourse in the current context of interpretation theory. 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. The first publication of an important work, believed lost, of Pater's major disciple, the twentieth-century art critic Adrian Stokes, is also featured in this volume. Some translation is included, and finally,The Modern Elegy from Hardy to Heaney, displays the changing forms of the traditional elegy through the fin-de-siele to the present.