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University of Florida Thesis Or Dissertation Formatting Template THE IDEAL OF THE REAL: MID-VICTORIAN REPRESENTATIONS OF THE ARTIST AND THE INVENTION OF REALISM By DANIEL SCHULTZ BROWN A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2012 1 © 2012 Daniel Schultz Brown 2 To my advisor, Pamela Gilbert: for tireless patience, steadfast support and gentle guidance 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS page LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................... 6 ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................... 7 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 11 History of Realism ................................................................................................... 14 Overview of Critical Literature ................................................................................. 21 Chapter Overview ................................................................................................... 34 2 “LESS EASILY DEFINED THAN APPREHENDED”: MID-VICTORAIN THEORIES OF REALISM ....................................................................................... 41 John Ruskin ............................................................................................................ 45 George Henry Lewes .............................................................................................. 54 William Michael Rossetti ......................................................................................... 59 David Masson ......................................................................................................... 62 3 “THE REALISM OF ROMANCE”: THE NACENT REALISM OF THE PRE- RAPHAELITE BROTHERHOOD ............................................................................ 70 Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s “Hand and Soul” .............................................................. 75 Charles Dickens’s Assault on Pre-Raphaelite Realism ........................................... 85 End of the Century Re-evaluations of the Pre-Raphaelites..................................... 91 4 REALISTIC POETRY: ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING’S AURORA LEIGH 105 Aurora’s Development .......................................................................................... 114 Carrington’s Development .................................................................................... 123 5 “MESOTHETIC” ART: CHARLES KINGSLEY’S PROVISIONAL REALISM ......... 134 Charles Kingsley and Realism .............................................................................. 139 Yeast..................................................................................................................... 145 Two Years Ago ..................................................................................................... 156 6 THE RENAISSANCE PERSPECTIVE: ROBERT BROWNING’S “FRA LIPPO LIPPI” AND “ANDREA DEL SARTO” AND GEORGE ELIOT’S ROMOLA ............ 166 Browning, Realism and the “Painter Poems” ........................................................ 172 George Eliot, Realism and Romola ....................................................................... 181 Piero di Cosimo .............................................................................................. 183 4 Girolamo Savonarola ...................................................................................... 188 7 “ART MYSTIC”: REALISM AND SENSATION FROM WILKIE COLLINS TO MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON ............................................................................ 203 Wilkie Collins’s Hide and Seek ............................................................................. 207 Mary Elizabeth Braddon and the Figure of the Artist ............................................ 220 APPENDIX: AFTERWARD ......................................................................................... 238 LIST OF REFERENCES ............................................................................................. 244 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .......................................................................................... 251 5 LIST OF FIGURES Figure page 3-1 John Everett Millais, Christ in the House of His Parents (1849-1850). ............. 101 3-2 Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Girlhood of Mary Virgin (1849). ........................... 102 3-3 Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ecce Ancilla Domini (1850). ........................................ 103 3-4 H.K. Browne (“Phiz”), “Instinct Stronger than Training.” ................................... 104 7-1 Charles Allston Collins, Convent Thoughts (1851). .......................................... 235 7-2 Claude Lorrain, Landscape with Aeneas at Delos (1642). ................................ 235 7-3 Nicolas Poussin, Landscape with Funeral of Phocion (1848-50). ..................... 236 7-4 William Powell Frith, The Railway Station (1862). ............................................ 236 7-5 William Powell Frith, Derby Day (1858). ........................................................... 237 6 Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy THE IDEAL OF THE REAL: MID-VICTORIAN REPRESENTATIONS OF THE ARTIST AND THE INVENTION OF REALISM By Daniel Schultz Brown May 2012 Chair: Pamela K. Gilbert Major: English The Ideal of the Real: Mid-Victorian Representations of the Artist and the Invention of Realism shows how British realism evolved out of older methods of representation typically classified as “idealism” or “romance,” and that this evolution happened partly through writings about fictional artists. Thus, although realism and idealism/romance are often posited as mutually exclusive, I argue that they are in fact part of a continuum and that realism is a far more sophisticated method of representation than often credited. Furthermore, artist figures were ideal because they provided both an example of realist identity formation and a mouthpiece for authors’ emerging theories of realism. Indeed, while realist identity formation has been pinpointed in Marxist and Foucaultian critiques as fostering dangerously conservative ideologies, I argue that realist representations of the artist often served a liberatory function for women and working class men. Artist figures were also especially versatile in that they could be used to show the similarities of realist representation across prose, poetry and the visual arts. Indeed, the evolution of realism in all media was a process of establishing for it the status of a “high” or “poetic” form of art. 7 After an introductory chapter covering contemporary scholarship on realism and image/text studies, Chapter 2 looks at some of the earliest Victorian critical theory about realism. These theories of realism are rooted in Thomas Carlyle’s “natural supernaturalism,” a belief that the spiritual manifests itself through the empirical. However, the most central figure addressed in this section is John Ruskin, who establishes realism as an aesthetic based on intensive labor and direct observation. I also address other early theorists of realism, such as George Henry Lewes, who were influential in shaping its evolution out of previous forms of idealism/romance. Chapter 3 then addresses the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood as the earliest practitioners of realism in England. Although we might now tend not to associate the PRB with realism, when they first publicly emerged in 1850, they were seen very much in this light. Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his brother William Michael both described Pre- Raphaelite techniques as similar, if (in their eyes) superior, to those of the contemporary French Realists. And Charles Dickens infamously attacked their realist treatment of unsettling social problems. However, criticism of the PRB during the latter part of the century, from the likes of Walter Pater, shows that their practice did not fall so heavily towards the extreme of an utterly detached or pessimistic point of view. Rather, PRB works demonstrate an “ideal of the real,” a poetic or mysterious treatment of the detailed, ordinary or occasionally even painful. Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh (1857), the subject of Chapter 4, also offers a poetic and mysterious treatment of the detailed, ordinary and occasionally painful. In it, she uses two artist characters, the titular poet and her painter friend, Vincent Carrington, as both realist practitioners and subjects of realism. Both artists 8 begin practicing traditions associated more formally with idealism and gradually evolve, through life experiences, to realism. Barrett Browning’s feminism heavily informs this realism, as she argues both for women as capable realist artists and as deserving of representation that would accurately reflect their “essential” selves. Aurora Leigh thus provides a strong example of how realism evolved out of the idealist traditions against which it was thought to be opposed and how it uses the artist figure to articulate both the aesthetic beliefs and “essential” identities of its practitioners. Chapter 5 then looks at Charles Kingsley’s prose fiction of the same period, which develops a similar practice of realism through the artist character Claude Mellot, who appears in Yeast (1848) and Two Years Ago (1857). Like Barrett Browning,
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