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Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher qualify 6” x 9” black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. Bell & Howell Information and Leaming 300 North Zeeb Road. Ann Arbor. Ml 48106-1346 USA UMI800-521-0600 THE CONTAGION OFLIFE: ROSSETTI, PATER, WILDE, AND THE AESTHETICIST BODY DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Stephen Weninger, MA., M A., M Phil. ***** The Ohio State University 1999 Dissertation Committee: Approved By: Professor David G. Riede, Adviser Professor Mark Conroy Adviser Professor Susan V^lliams English Graduate Program UMI Number 9951742 Copyright 1999 by Weninger, Stephen All rights reserved. UMI UMI Microform9951742 Copyright 2000 by Bell & Howell Information and Leaming Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Bell & Howell Information and Leaming Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1348 Copyright by Stephen Weninger 1999 ABSTRACT Many studies of the Aesthetic Movement still presume it was fundamentally an idealist over-evaluation of art. It has even been stated that the logical consummation of its premises is not only an unethical ahistoricism but fascism. This dissertation argues that these cultural productions, highly responsive to the new biologies, focused on the human body. As such, Aestheticism was no ivory-tower cult of art, but a gesture o f ideological rebellion against the era's underlying myths of determinism and human perfectibility. Chapter one demonstrates how Rossetti's "Jenny," an interior monologue of a scholar before a sleeping prostitute, foregrounds the body as such and how it subverts the courtly love tradition Rossettian texts seemingly support. The next chapter argues that the painting Dantis Amor similarly dramatizes the lover's melancholy before the intransigent body. Chapter three, a broad reading of Pater's texts, contends that his numerous images of malady and his various grotesquerie are central to his material aesthetics. His short story, "Sebastian van Storck," studied in the following section, typically critiques all philosophies which would abstract corporeality. Chapter five discusses the early modernist turn towards a healthy, masculine aesthetic, against Aestheticism's "decadent" and "effeminate " art. This reactionary strain is discerned in the new Glaskultur, from avant-garde manifestoes to fictional texts like Herbert Read's The Green Child. The important issues of social ideology raised here are the subject of the remaining pages. First, I explore the neglected links between Victorian Hellenism, the ascendant theories of "Aryanism, " and Prussian classicism. The Aestheticist body, I suggest, was an ignored counterweight to this fantasized affiliation, an imagined anatomy which would play a crucial role in the barbarity of the fascist biocracy. ii The final chapter contrasts the depth model of the body which structures nineteenth-century idealism, high modernism and fascist aesthetics with the palimpsest model favored by Rossetti, Pater and Wilde. Aestheticism attempted to work out a poetics (and by implication a politics) of the diseased, heterogeneous body as opposed to the "healthy" and "transparent" Victorian body which found new life in early modem thought and ultimately in the corporeal politics of fascism. ui In memory of my uncle Dr. Weninger Antal (1902-1993) IV ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to express (with the usual disclaimers) my deepest thanks to my adviser, David Riede, who fostered my interest in Aestheticism and directed this work. The unfailing rightness of his comments were matched only by his unsparing kindness. I also benefited from the suggestions of the other members of my committee, Mark Conroy and Susan Williams. Wittingly or not, all usefully reinforced Pater's keen insight that we "hold our theories lightly." Debts, intellectual and otherwise, are owed to many others. Foremost among them are: Mic and Nan Billet, John Covolo, Gosia Gabrys, Elana Gomel, Marie-Paule Ha, and Jim Hsu. VTTA June 9, 1949 .................Bom - Bludesch, Austria 1975 .............................. M A. Religious Studies, University of Louvain (Belgium) 1982 .............................. MA. Language Studies, University of Hong Kong 1986 .............................. M.Phil. Modem Literary Theory, University of Hong Kong PUBUCATIONS 1. Stephen Weninger. "Symbol and Thing in Dante Rossetti's Dantis Amor.” The Journal ofPre-RaphaeliteStu(ües. 8 (1999): 5-16. 2. Stephen Weninger and Elana Gomel. "The Tell-Tale Surface: Fashion and Gender in The Woman in White.” Victorians Institute Journal. 25 (1997): 29-58. FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: English VI TABLE OFCONTENTS Page A bstract.................................................................. ........................................................ ii D edication .................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgments ........................................................................................................... v V ita................................................................................... vi List of Figures ........................................................................................................... vii Chapters. Introduction: The Victorian Dream of Momus .............................................................. I 1. Rossetti, "Jenny," and the Unspeakable Body.......................................................... 24 2. Symbol and Thing in Rossetti's Dantis Amor. ......................................................... 56 3. Pater's Diaphaneite En Corps........................................................................................ 78 4. Stabat Paten "Sebastian van Storck" and the Desecent to the Mothers .................. 115 5. Romancing the Crystal: Utopias of Transparency and Their Dreams of Pain 155 6. Aestheticism, Hellenism, and the Facist Body Politics ........................................ 189 7. Wilde in the Flayer's Zone ................................................................................. 227 C onclusion ................................................................ 256 Works Cited ............................................................................................................... 304 Appendix: Figures ..................................................................................................... 305 vu LIST OF HGURES Figure Page 1. D antisAm or (1859) Dante Gabriel Rossetti .................................................... 306 2. D antisAm or (Study) Dante Gabriel Rossetti ................................................... 307 3. The BlessedDamozel (1879) Dante Gabriel Rossetti ........................................ 308 4. [ lock My Door Upon Myself {IS9].) Fernand Khnopff. .................................... 309 5. Goethe in Frankfurt ( 1862) Wilhelm Kaulbach................................................ 310 6. The Sculptor o f Germany {\933) O. Garvens ................................................ 311 7. Adolf the Superman: Swallows Gold and Spews Junk (1935) John Heartfield.... 312 8. Illustration from Peter Camper's Dissertation sur les Variétés Naturelles (1791).... 313 9. Discobolos (Greek antiquity) Myron ............................................................... 314 10. The Madonna o f Port Lligat {1950) Salvador Dali ........................................... 315 11. Untitled{l992) David Wojnarowicz ............................................................... 316 12. Untitled (1992) Kiki Smith.............................................................................. 317 viu INTRODUCTION: THE VICTORIAN DREAM OF MOMUS [One would think] that the body is a plain sheet of glass through w hich the soul looks straight and clear, and. save for one or two passions such as desire and greed, is null, and negligible and non-existenL On the contrary, the very opposite is true. All day. all night the body intervenes .... The creature w ithin can only gaze throu^ the pane- smudged or rosy.... Virginia Woolf "On Being 111" Despite some notable exceptions, studies of nineteenthrcenttuy British Aestheticism (an umbrella term for a constellation of texts from Pre-Raphaelitism