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Walter Pater Unmasked: Impressionistic Criticism and the Gender of Aesthetic Writing
Author(s) -
Evangelista Stefano
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
literature compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.158
H-Index - 4
ISSN - 1741-4113
DOI - 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2004.00052.x
Subject(s) - pleasure , criticism , subject (documents) , the renaissance , homosexuality , literature , element (criminal law) , psychology , art , psychoanalysis , aesthetics , art history , law , computer science , neuroscience , library science , political science
This article addresses the question of how to look for the ‘secret’ of Walter Pater's homosexuality in his writings. Drawing from The Renaissance (1873), I argue that Pater's essays bring together the autobiographical element of critical impressionism and the insistence on pleasure of aesthetic writing in a way that reveals the critic as sexually desiring subject.