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Vestures of the Past: the Other Historicisms of Victorian Aesthetics University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2019 Vestures Of The Past: The Other Historicisms Of Victorian Aesthetics Timothy Chandler University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Comparative Literature Commons Recommended Citation Chandler, Timothy, "Vestures Of The Past: The Other Historicisms Of Victorian Aesthetics" (2019). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 3434. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/3434 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/3434 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Vestures Of The Past: The Other Historicisms Of Victorian Aesthetics Abstract The importance of history to Victorian culture, and to nineteenth-century Europe more generally, is readily apprehended not only from its historiography, but also from its philosophy, art, literature, science, politics, and public institutions. This dissertation argues that the discourse of aesthetics in Victorian Britain constitutes a major area of historical thinking that, in contrast to the scientific and philosophical historicisms that dominated nineteenth-century European intellectual culture, focuses on individual experience. Its starting point is Walter Pater’s claim that we are born “clothed in a vesture of the past”—that is, that our relation to ourselves is historical and that our relation to history is aesthetic. Through readings of aesthetic theory and art criticism, along with works of historiography, fiction, poetry, and visual art, this dissertation explores some of the ways in which Victorian aesthetics addresses the problem of the relationship between the sensuous representation and experience of the historical, on the one hand, and the subjects of such representation and experience, on the other. Through these readings, aesthetic modes of historical relation such as memory, revival, contrast, haunting, collection, and displacement are addressed as modes of subjectivation. The dissertation considers a wide range of more and less canonical texts by John Ruskin, George Eliot, Walter Pater, John Addington Symonds, William Morris, Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley, and Marcus Clarke. While the dissertation focuses on texts written in England, it takes a transnational approach, situating these texts in the broader contexts of the European intellectual discourses with which they engage and of British imperialism, which is addressed in the dissertation’s coda through texts created in colonial Australia. By highlighting the role of the aesthetic in the formation of subjectivity as historical, this dissertation revises the image of nineteenth-century aesthetics as either ahistorical, formulating the pleasures of a timeless subject, or, conversely, deterministic, finding in art merely a reflection of larger historical processes. Instead, aesthetics emerges here as a discourse for the problematization of the historicity of subjectivity. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Comparative Literature and Literary Theory First Advisor Emily Steinlight Keywords Aesthetics, Historicism, Subjectivity, Victorian literature Subject Categories Comparative Literature This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/3434 VESTURES OF THE PAST: THE OTHER HISTORICISMS OF VICTORIAN AESTHETICS Timothy Chandler A DISSERTATION in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2019 Supervisor of Dissertation ____________________________ Emily Steinlight, Assistant Professor of English Graduate Group Chairperson ____________________________ Emily Wilson, Professor of Classical Studies Dissertation Committee Max Cavitch, Associate Professor of English Paul Saint-Amour, Professor of English VESTURES OF THE PAST: THE OTHER HISTORICISMS OF VICTORIAN AESTHETICS COPYRIGHT 2019 Timothy Chandler This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ Acknowledgments It gives me great pleasure to acknowledge here those who have helped make this project a reality. I could not have asked for a better supervisor than Emily Steinlight, whose advice and support at every stage, along with her critical insight and amaZing knowledge of the nineteenth century have made this a dissertation worthy of the name. My two readers, Max Cavitch and Paul Saint-Amour, have been similarly generous in their advice, challenging me to think harder and with greater precision. To Max I am also indebted for the suggestion of “other historicisms.” Many others have read parts of this dissertation, discussed ideas, or provided institutional support along the way, including Charles Bernstein, Warren Breckman, Michael Gamer, David Kurnick, Heather Love, Bob Perelman, Joseph Vogl, and Emily Wilson. JoAnne Dubil made navigating the academic institution much easier. I am, moreover, grateful to the TheoriZing and Res-Vic working groups at Penn, and to the Ruskin Seminar at Lancaster University, for providing congenial environments in which to present three of these chapters as works- in-progress. While at Lancaster, I was also able to spend time in the Ruskin Archive and I thank the director and staff for their assistance and support. My friends have, in some cases, given not only the gift of their friendship, but also the time to read over parts of my work. In this regard, I am especially indebted to Zach Fruit, whose insightful comments and unflagging enthusiasm for this project provided invaluable encouragement; to Ellena Savage, who inspired me to start writing; and to Daniel Villegas VéleZ, who has been one of my most incisive readers. Julien Ségol helped me with a particularly difficult bit of French. Others, in particular Shoshana Adler, Lucas de Lima, Ericka Florenciani, Allison Harris, Carlo Lanfossi, Anouk Madörin, Maria Murphy, Raquel Salas Rivera, and Ketil Slagstad, have been great friends and compelling interlocutors. Last but not least, I am grateful to Tahmooris RamaZankhani, aesthete and decadent, who has supported me in more ways than I can say. iii ABSTRACT VESTURES OF THE PAST: THE OTHER HISTORICISMS OF VICTORIAN AESTHETICS Timothy Chandler Emily Steinlight The importance of history to Victorian culture, and to nineteenth-century Europe more generally, is readily apprehended not only from its historiography, but also from its philosophy, art, literature, science, politics, and public institutions. This dissertation argues that the discourse of aesthetics in Victorian Britain constitutes a major area of historical thinking that, in contrast to the scientific and philosophical historicisms that dominated nineteenth-century European intellectual culture, focuses on individual experience. Its starting point is Walter Pater’s claim that we are born “clothed in a vesture of the past”—that is, that our relation to ourselves is historical and that our relation to history is aesthetic. Through readings of aesthetic theory and art criticism, along with works of historiography, fiction, poetry, and visual art, this dissertation explores some of the ways in which Victorian aesthetics addresses the problem of the relationship between the sensuous representation and experience of the historical, on the one hand, and the subjects of such representation and experience, on the other. Through these readings, aesthetic modes of historical relation such as memory, revival, contrast, haunting, collection, and displacement are addressed as modes of subjectivation. The dissertation iv considers a wide range of more and less canonical texts by John Ruskin, George Eliot, Walter Pater, John Addington Symonds, William Morris, Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley, and Marcus Clarke. While the dissertation focuses on texts written in England, it takes a transnational approach, situating these texts in the broader contexts of the European intellectual discourses with which they engage and of British imperialism, which is addressed in the dissertation’s coda through texts created in colonial Australia. By highlighting the role of the aesthetic in the formation of subjectivity as historical, this dissertation revises the image of nineteenth-century aesthetics as either ahistorical, formulating the pleasures of a timeless subject, or, conversely, deterministic, finding in art merely a reflection of larger historical processes. Instead, aesthetics emerges here as a discourse for the problematiZation of the historicity of subjectivity. v Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . iii ABSTRACT . iv LIST OF TABLES . vii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS . viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS . ix PREFACE . x INTRODUCTION “WE ARE ALL HISTORICISTS TODAY” . 1 CHAPTER ONE THE AESTHETIC AND THE ASCETIC: NATURAL HISTORY AND MEMORY IN JOHN RUSKIN AND GEORGE ELIOT . 49 CHAPTER TWO RENAISSANCE NOW: HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE AND THE MODERN INDIVIDUAL IN JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS AND WALTER PATER . 92 CHAPTER THREE BLURRED CONTRAST: GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE AND THE HAUNTED FUTURE IN JOHN RUSKIN AND WILLIAM MORRIS . 125 CHAPTER FOUR DECADENT ANTIQUARIANISM: LYRIC COLLECTION AND ANTI-CLASSICAL DISPLAY IN OSCAR WILDE AND AUBREY BEARDSLEY . 170 CODA VICTORIAN AESTHETICS IN THE SETTLER COLONY: MARCUS CLARKE’S WEIRD MELANCHOLY
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