English 491: History of Literary Criticism

Walter Pater Study Questions

Al Drake | 520 Hum. Tu/Th 1:30-2:30 | ajdrake@ajdrake.com

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"Preface" to The Renaissance (1873, 1893)

1. What similarities and differences do you find between Pater's statements about the "the aim of true criticism" (835-36) and Arnold's remarks about "the critic's task" or "the critical power" (809, 815, elsewhere) in "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time"?

2. What must the critic do first, before he or she can hope to achieve the "aim of true criticism"? What is the aesthetic critic's responsibility to the work of art and to the audience? (836-37)

3. Towards the end of the "Preface" (at 838), how does Pater describe the fifteenth-century Italian Renaissance? To what extent do his remarks resemble Matthew Arnold's ideas in "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time" (808, cf. "the man and the moment") concerning artists and the societies within which they create?

"Conclusion" to The Renaissance (1873)

4. How does Pater describe the "tendency of modern thought" in the first few pages of his "Conclusion"? What examples does he provide of this tendency, and how does he enlist the language of scientific objectivity and discovery in his description? (839-40)

5. According to Pater, following Novalis, what is the "service" of philosophy? How does this view differ from the philosophical aims of Kant and Hegel as we have discussed them in class? (840)

6. How does Pater define "success in life"? Again, how does he employ the language of science to make his case? (840)

7. What sort of audience do you think might find Pater's aesthetic program appealing and viable? How might it be said that Pater's program amounts to another Victorian withdrawal from the "romantic project" as we have discussed it in our sessions on romantic poet-critics? (general question)

8. Do you find Pater's final statements about art's place in the hierarchy of pleasure convincing in light of the previous remarks he has made about pleasure in his "Conclusion"? Why might his "Conclusion" have been considered misleading or morally suspect by some Victorian readers? (general question)

9. To what extent does the tone of the "Conclusion" to The Renaissance suit the statements about aesthetic criticism Pater makes in his "Preface"? (general question)

Extra: "La Gioconda" passage from the chapter "Leonardo da Vinci" in The Renaissance (not required reading, not in criticism anthology)

10. To what extent does Pater, in describing Leonardo's famous portrait of Mona Lisa ("La Gioconda"), achieve "the aim of true criticism" that he sets forth in his "Preface"? Is Pater "seeing the object as in itself it really is," or is he rather, to borrow Wilde's witticism about Pater and Arnold, "seeing the object as in itself it really is not"? Explain.