Anglo-German Interactions in the Literature of the 1890s
Patrick Bridgwater
Legenda (General Series) •1 August 1999
- ‘The author is to be congratulated for shedding new light on a wide range of Anglo-German cross-currents... His study weaves a multi-faceted web of historical and inter-personal connections, and is at its best when it forges links between the approaches of different authors and diverse forms of art.’ — Susanne Stark, Modern Language Review 97.2, 2002, 523-4 (full text online)
- ‘This well-documented volume provides new insights into the key social and cultural issues of the 1890s, including the truth and morality of artistic writing.’ — Crocker and Womack, The Year's Work in English Studies 2000, 532
Algernon Swinburne and Walter Pater: Victorian Aestheticism, Doubt and Secularisation
Sara Lyons
Legenda (General Series) •1 July 2015
- ‘As British aestheticism continues to enjoy a revival of interest, it becomes ever more urgent to reassess the metaphysical work that Pater and Swinburne have done for us in their search for a way beyond doubt. Algernon Swinburne and Walter Pater is a timely reminder of our intellectual inheritance from this moment of crisis in Western religion.’ — Orla Polten, Essays in Criticism 66.3, July 2016, 390-96
- ‘Sara Lyons’s admirable monograph will prove a cornerstone in Victorian studies and will soon become invaluable to students and scholars alike working on 19th-century literature and culture.’ — Charlotte Ribeyrol, Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens 83, Printemps 2016
- ‘Lyons’s rethinking of Swinburne’s and Pater’s relationship to religion is absolutely necessary in light of recent revisions of the secularization thesis. She productively complicates the oversimplified binary between belief and unbelief that still too often plagues our readings of Victorian literature, and provocatively asks us to rethink the reasons underlying the Aesthetic Movement’s embrace of an ‘art for art’s sake’ philosophy. Algernon Swinburne and Walter Pater should be read by scholars of aestheticism, nine- teenth-century religion, and Victorian literature more generally.’ — Dustin Friedman, Review of English Studies Advance Access 4 October 2016
- ‘A valuable addition to scholarship on Swinburne, Pater and aestheticism.’ — Beth Newman, Victorian Studies 60.1, Autumn 2017, 126-28
Aestheticism and the Philosophy of Death: Walter Pater and Post-Hegelianism
Giles Whiteley
Studies In Comparative Literature 20•12 April 2010
- ‘Scholars have long been aware of the importance of acknowledging Pater’s debt to Hegelian philosophy. And many critics of Pater have performed almost obligatory nods towards Hegel’s influence, conceptualized in vague terms, without formulating an understanding of its precise forms. Such critics will now have to engage seriously with Aestheticism and the Philosophy of Death, which contains the most scholarly and detailed account of Pater’s Hegelianism to date.’ — Stefano Evangelista, Modern Language Review 106.4, 2011, 1133-34 (full text online)
- ‘In this meticulously researched monograph Giles Whiteley sets himself the expansive task of reading Pater’s entire intellectual project as an extended conversation with Hegel... the case is well made that Pater should be considered a proto-poststructuralist thinker.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 48.3, June 2012, 361