Walter Pater and the function of criticism

Abstract

This study starts from the belief that the significance of Pater for criticism has been obscured and distorted by the "Pater legend", and that there has been a danger of isolating him, and of exaggerating his isolation. Pater's views and practice of criticism rested upon a concern with "culture as deep as that of Arnold. It has therefore been necessary to compare Arnold and Pater as exponents of culture. It has been possible to show that: a) Arnold started from suppositions which Pater does not take for granted. b) Arnold's broad, publicist, treatment was undoubtedly of great service to his generation, but left much unexplained. Pater fills the gaps. c) Arnold's approach was "external", Pater's was "internal", and showed awareness of the individual's needs, and of the problem of communication. d) As regards the theory of criticism, Pater's statement of it is more permanently helpful than Arnold's. It is in this context that the true significance of Marius the Epicurean for Pater's theory of criticism is revealed. Pater's formal statements of his principles in the Preface to The Renaissance have been reviewed, together with the application in his principal critical essays. The place of Pater's criticism between "pure" criticism and the biographical/historical has been assessed. In the belief that the publicity attaching to "Art for Art's Sake" in art-criticism is partly responsible for some distortion or blurring of Pater's purely literary position, an attempt has been made to distinguish the parallel but not identical poetic line from Blake to Rossetti and to collect French literary statements so far as they are significant for Pater, particularly the opinions of Gautier, Baudelaire, and, especially, Flaubert. The Essay Style has been analysed in considerable detail as embodying Pater's mature judgments on creative writing and the principles and function of criticism. Finally, though this is not a study of influences, an endeavour has been made to demonstrate the significance of Pater's work for the function of criticism by relating him a) to representative critics of the preceding and immediately succeeding generation b) to some modern critics who, while not "disciples", illustrate the persistence of central ideas for which Pater contended and to which he habituated critical minds.