11 November 2008

Pater's Aesthetics

and how he's influenced the rest of the world.  Structure:  The Renaissance, Appreciations, Marius.  Wordsworth is key because he is the most immediate launching point.  The Romantics are also the splitting point:  Byron  & Shelley opposing the founders, Wordsworth & Coleridge, and Keats teetering somewhere between, trying to reconcile the points.  Pater's misreading of Wordsworth is one of his foundational claims:  here it is that he asserts contemplation is sterile (Appreciations).  Slowly, slowly building the foundations for this work--the culmination of my fling with academia, unless an MA in philosophy begins to woo me.

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