Walter Pater Mit Portr 1 Print PDF Download

There have been no biographies of Pater in English (except for a rather slight, commemorative outline by Arthur Symons) since the brief or inaccurate tributes and studies before World War I, and the time has come for a full-length study to combine such facts of Pater's life as can be established with a careful analysis of his art. Centering on the Aesthetic hero, this study attempts to present Pater's fiction and biography as lucidly as possible, so that the general reader, the undergraduate, and the fledgling graduate student will benefit from its critical reading as much as the Victorian specialist. Since the scope of a few hundred pages limits consideration to the more significant writings, this study has been weighted in the direction of Pater's completed imaginative work, utilizing his reviews, lectures, critical appreciations, and unfinished fiction and other fragments only when the occasion warrants. And finally, inasmuch as any new line of critical inquiry that also aspires to be a broad-based reassessment of Pater's theory of culture must build upon a core of established insights, I have not hesitated when appropriate both to incorporate my previously published readings or to draw on the excellent recent work of Lawrence Evans, Harold Bloom, J. Hillis Miller, Ian Fletcher, and a number of others who have enriched my understanding of the subject.--author's preface.