Page 64 - DENG405_BRITISH_POETRY

Unit 6: Major Literary Terms-VI

3. The word Victorian has come to be used to describe a set of ...... and ...... values. Notes
4. The British decadent writers were much influenced by the ...... professor Walter Pater.
5. ...... was a movement in early 20th century Anglo-American poetry.

6.4 Aestheticism

Aestheticism or the Aesthetic Movement was a 19th century European art movement that emphasized
aesthetic values more than socio-political themes for literature, fine art, the decorative arts, and interior
design. Generally, it represents the same tendencies that symbolism or decadence represented in
France, or decadentismo represented in Italy, and may be considered the British version of the same
style. It was part of the anti-19th century reaction and had post-Romantic origins, and as such
anticipates modernism. It was a feature of the late 19th century from about 1868 to about 1900.

6.4.1 Aesthetic Literature

The British decadent writers were much influenced by the Oxford professor Walter Pater and his
essays published during 1867–68, in which he stated that life had to be lived intensely, with an ideal
of beauty. His text Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873) was very well regarded by art-
oriented young men of the late 19th century. Writers of the Decadent movement writers used the
slogan “Art for Art’s Sake” (L’art pour l’art), the origin of which is debated. Some claim that it was
invented by the philosopher Victor Cousin, although Angela Leighton in the publication On Form:
Poetry, Aestheticism and the Legacy of a Word (2007) notes that the phrase was used by Benjamin
Constant as early as 1804. It is generally accepted to have been promoted by Theophile Gautier in
France, who interpreted the phrase to suggest that there was not any real association between art and
morality.
The artists and writers of Aesthetic style tended to profess that the Arts should provide refined
sensuous pleasure, rather than convey moral or sentimental messages. As a consequence, they did
not accept John Ruskin and Matthew Arnold’s utilitarian conception of art as something moral or
useful. Instead, they believed that Art did not have any didactic purpose; it need only be beautiful.
The Aesthetes developed a cult of beauty, which they considered the basic factor of art. Life should
copy Art, they asserted. They considered nature as crude and lacking in design when compared to
art. The main characteristics of the style were: suggestion rather than statement, sensuality, great
use of symbols, and synaesthetic effects—that is, correspondence between words, colours and music.
Music was used to establish mood.

6.5 Imagist

Imagism was a movement in early 20th-century Anglo-American poetry that favored precision of
imagery and clear, sharp language. The Imagists rejected the sentiment and discursiveness typical
of much Romantic and Victorian poetry. This was in contrast to their contemporaries, the Georgian
poets, who were by and large content to work within that tradition. Group publication of work
under the Imagist name appearing between 1914 and 1917 featured writing by many of the most
significant figures in Modernist poetry in English, as well as a number of other Modernist figures
prominent in fields other than poetry.
Based in London, the Imagists were drawn from Great Britain, Ireland and the United States.
Somewhat unusually for the time, the Imagists featured a number of women writers among their
major figures. Imagism is also significant historically as the first organised Modernist English
language literary movement or group.

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