Pater the Classicist

Classical Scholarship, Reception, and Aestheticism

Nonfiction, Art & Architecture, General Art, Fiction & Literature, Literary Theory & Criticism, History
Cover of the book Pater the Classicist by , OUP Oxford
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: ISBN: 9780191091346
Publisher: OUP Oxford Publication: March 2, 2017
Imprint: OUP Oxford Language: English
Author:
ISBN: 9780191091346
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Publication: March 2, 2017
Imprint: OUP Oxford
Language: English

Pater the Classicist is the first book to address in detail Walter Pater's important contribution to the study of classical antiquity. Widely considered our greatest aesthetic critic and now best known as a precursor to modernist writers and post-modernist thinkers of the twentieth century, Pater was also a classicist by profession who taught at the University of Oxford. He wrote extensively about Greek art and philosophy, but also authored an influential historical novel set in ancient Rome, Marius the Epicurean, and a variety of short stories depicting the survival of classical culture in later ages. These superficially diverging interests actually went closely hand-in-hand: it can plausibly be asserted that it is the classical tradition in its broadest sense, including the question of how to understand its workings and temporalities, which forms Pater's principal subject as a writer. Although he initially approached antiquity obliquely, through the Italian Renaissance, for example, or the poetry of William Morris, later in his career he wrote more, and more directly, about the ancient world, and particularly about Greece, his first love. The essays in this collection cover all his major works and reveal a many-sided and inspirational figure, whose achievements helped to reinvigorate the classical studies that were the basis of the English educational system of the nineteenth century, and whose conception of Classics as cross-disciplinary and outward-looking can be a model to scholars and students today. They discuss his classicism generally, his fiction set in classical antiquity, his writings on Greek art and culture, and those on ancient philosophy, and in doing so they also illuminate Pater's position within his Victorian context, among figures such as J. A. Symonds, Henry Nettleship, Vernon Lee, and Jane Harrison, as well as his place in the study and reception of Classics today.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

Pater the Classicist is the first book to address in detail Walter Pater's important contribution to the study of classical antiquity. Widely considered our greatest aesthetic critic and now best known as a precursor to modernist writers and post-modernist thinkers of the twentieth century, Pater was also a classicist by profession who taught at the University of Oxford. He wrote extensively about Greek art and philosophy, but also authored an influential historical novel set in ancient Rome, Marius the Epicurean, and a variety of short stories depicting the survival of classical culture in later ages. These superficially diverging interests actually went closely hand-in-hand: it can plausibly be asserted that it is the classical tradition in its broadest sense, including the question of how to understand its workings and temporalities, which forms Pater's principal subject as a writer. Although he initially approached antiquity obliquely, through the Italian Renaissance, for example, or the poetry of William Morris, later in his career he wrote more, and more directly, about the ancient world, and particularly about Greece, his first love. The essays in this collection cover all his major works and reveal a many-sided and inspirational figure, whose achievements helped to reinvigorate the classical studies that were the basis of the English educational system of the nineteenth century, and whose conception of Classics as cross-disciplinary and outward-looking can be a model to scholars and students today. They discuss his classicism generally, his fiction set in classical antiquity, his writings on Greek art and culture, and those on ancient philosophy, and in doing so they also illuminate Pater's position within his Victorian context, among figures such as J. A. Symonds, Henry Nettleship, Vernon Lee, and Jane Harrison, as well as his place in the study and reception of Classics today.

More books from OUP Oxford

Cover of the book Navigation: A Very Short Introduction by
Cover of the book Dipterocarp Biology, Ecology, and Conservation by
Cover of the book Handbook of Music and Emotion by
Cover of the book The Sinews of Habsburg Power by
Cover of the book Elizabeth I by
Cover of the book A User's Guide to Thought and Meaning by
Cover of the book The Fragmenting Family by
Cover of the book Flash! by
Cover of the book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by
Cover of the book Not Quite Hope and Other Political Emotions in the Gilded Age by
Cover of the book The Oxford Dictionary of Plays by
Cover of the book Training in Medicine by
Cover of the book Mass Exodus by
Cover of the book Global Economic History: A Very Short Introduction by
Cover of the book The Oxford Handbook of Truth by
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy