The Pre-Raphaelite Body : Fear and Desire in Painting, Poetry, and Criticism

ISBN-13: 9780198182573

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Opis

Pre-Raphaelitism was the first avant-garde movement in Britain. It shocked its first audience, and as it modulated into Aestheticism it continued to disturb the British public. This interdisciplinary study traces the sources of this critical reaction to the representation of the body in painting and poetry from the work of Millais and Morris to that of Rossetti and Burne-Jones. The book also explores how reactions were conditioned by such late nineteenth-century anxieties as fear of cholera and hatred of Catholicism, fascination with the fallen woman, horror at the shrieking sisterhood' of emancipated women, and even the terror of psycho-sexual diseases.

Recenzje

an important survey of discourses of Victorian malaise, a case-study in the topography of discontent ... Bullen's elegantly written book reveals a lexicon of discomfort with bodily images which violated conventional modes of visual representation, and which seemed, in their degeneracy, to endanger the nation's well-being. This is an illuminating study, an important source-text, a volume which throws light on cultural history, sexual mores, the formation of discourses on the aesthetic, and the purchase of culturally constructed gender roles on the reception of avant-garde Victorian paintin and poetry.