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Is Walter Pater an Impressionistic Critic?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Ruth C. Child
Ruth C. Child*
Affiliation:
Wellesley College
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Extract

Walter Pater is commonly known as an impressionistic critic. Many who use the term of him consider it a compliment. For instance, A. J. Farmer admires him greatly, and calls the Preface to the Renaissance an “admirable plaidoyer” for impressionistic criticism. He explains it thus:

La beauté, écrit-il [Pater] en substance, ne sairait se réduire à une formule ab straite; elle est multiple et diverse, elle varie selon les époques et même selon les individus. A quoi bon essayer de l'enfermer dans tel principe d'ecoie, dans tel concept fatalement arbitrare? La tâche de critique ne consiste-t-elle pas plutôt à communiquer au lecteur ses enthousiasmes, à lui décrire les sensations qu'il a éprouvées devant l'ceuvre d'art, à lui montrer les images qui se sont succede dans le miroir de son ame?

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 53 , Issue 4 , December 1938 , pp. 1172 - 1185
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1938

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References

Note 1 in page 1172 Le mouvement esthétique et “décadent” en Angleterre (1873–1900), Paris: Bibliothèque de la Revue de littérature comparée, lxxv (1931), 38.

Note 2 in page 1172 Waller Pater as a Critic of English Literature, A Study of Appreciations (Grenoble, 1931), passim.

Note 3 in page 1172 “The Perfect Critic,” The Sacred Wood (London: Methusen and Co., 1932, 1st ed., 1920), pp. 2, 3. For his very unfavorable opinion of Pater, see “Arnold & Pater,” Eliot's Selected Essays (London: Faber & Faber, 1932).

Note 4 in page 1173 “The Impressionists,” Bookman, lxx (1929), 341.

Note 5 in page 1173 Masters of Modern French Criticism (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1912), p. 317.

Note 6 in page 1173 La vie littéraire (Paris: Calmann Lévy, n.d.), i, iv, iii.

Note 7 in page 1173 Op. cit., Ren., pp. 124, 125. All Pater references are to the Macmillan Library Edition (London, 1910).

Note 8 in page 1174 “L'homme qui rit,” Works, éd. E. Gosse and T. J. Wise (London: Wm. Heinemann, 1925–27), pp. 212–213.

Note 9 in page 1174 Loc. cit., pp. ix, x.

Note 10 in page 1174 Plato and Platonism, pp. 140, 143.

Note 11 in page 1175 Op. cit., Ren., p. 51; see also “Two Early French Stories,” Ren., p. 19; “Leonardo,” Ibid., p. 109; “Joachim du Bellay,” Ibid., p. 167; “Winckelmann,” Ibid., p. 178; “Amiel's Journal,” Guardian, pp. 25; 26; “Mérimée,” Misc. Studies, p. 14; “Mr. George Moore as an Art Critic,” passim, Sketches and Reviews; Plato and Platonism, pp. 124–125.

Note 12 in page 1175 “Michelangelo,” Ren., p. 73.

Note 13 in page 1175 The essays on Rossetti, Lamb, and Sir Thomas Browne.

Note 14 in page 1175 “Mérimée,” Misc. Studies, p. 14.

Note 15 in page 1176 Arthur C. Benson, Walter Pater (London: Macmillan and Co., 1906), p. 211.

Note 16 in page 1176 Friedrich Staub, Das imaginäre Porträt Walter Paters (Un. of Zürich Thesis, 1926), pp. 60–70.

Note 17 in page 1176 Op. cit., Imaginary Portraits, p. 44.

Note 18 in page 1176 Another study which should be consulted for evidence as to Pater's sound scholarship is “Pater, Heine, and the Old Gods of Greece,” by J. S. Harrison, in the PMLA, xxxix, (1924), 655–686. Professor Harrison shows how in Denys L'Auxerrois and Apollo in Picardy, Pater is transferring to a medieval setting the myths of Dionysus and Apollo. The exact knowledge which dictates Pater's parallelisms is astonishing.

Note 19 in page 1176 Op. cit., p. xi.

Note 20 in page 1177 Op. cit., p. 139.

Note 21 in page 1177 Op. cit., p. 34.

Note 22 in page 1177 Op. cit., p. 66.

Note 23 in page 1177 Ibid., pp. 67, 68.

Note 24 in page 1177 “Winckelmann,” Ren., pp. 198, 199.

Note 25 in page 1178 “Coleridge,” Appre., pp. 65–69, 73–79, 81–83.

Note 26 in page 1178 Op. cit., pp. 124, 125.

Note 27 in page 1179 Shelburne Essays, Series viii (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1913), p. 99.

Note 28 in page 1179 Walter Pater, A Critic of English Literature, passim.

Note 29 in page 1179 History of English Literature, 1830–1890 2nd ed., (London: Arnold and Co., 1927), i, 279.

Note 30 in page 1179 Op. cit., p. viii.

Note 31 in page 1179 On Translating Homer, Works (London: Macmillan, 1903), v, 217.

Note 32 in page 1179 Thomas Wright, The Life of Walter Pater (London: Everett and Co., 1907), i, 245.

Note 33 in page 1180 Sämtliche Werke (Jubiläums-Ausgabe, Stuttgart and Berlin: J. G. Cotta, 1902–07) xxiv, Bk. 12, p. 76.

Note 34 in page 1180 “Heinrich Heine,” Essays in Criticism, 1st Series, Works, iii, p. 175.

Note 35 in page 1180 Ren., p. 235; see also Marins, i, pp. 138–146.

Note 36 in page 1181 “Leonardo,” Ren., p. 111.

Note 37 in page 1181 Op. cit., Ren., p. 199.

Note 38 in page 1181 Ibid., p. x.

Note 39 in page 1182 Edward Thomas, Walter Pater, A Critical Study (New York: Mitchell Kennedy, 1913), p. 73.

Note 40 in page 1182 Op. cit., p. xiii.

Note 41 in page 1182 Ibid., p. x.

Note 42 in page 1182 “Botticelli,” Ren., p. 61.

Note 43 in page 1183 Op. cit., Appre., p. 42.

Note 44 in page 1183 Waller Paler as Critic of Eng. Lit., passim; see especially pp. 32, 95–96.

Note 45 in page 1183 Op. cit., p. 177.

Note 46 in page 1184 Ibid., p. 198.

Note 47 in page 1184 Op. cit., p. 103.