Overview

As a teacher of Plato in Oxford's Literae Humaniores, Walter Pater was informed by philosophy from his earliest essays to his last book. The Platonism of Walter Pater examines Pater's deep engagement with Platonism throughout his career. It overturns his reputation as a superficial aesthete known mainly for his 'Conclusion' to The Renaissance to reposition his contribution to literature and the history of ideas. In his criticism and fiction, including his studies on myth, Pater was influenced by several of Plato's dialogues. Phaedrus, Symposium, Theaetetus, Cratylus, and The Republic informed his philosophy of beauty, history, myth, knowledge, ethics, language, and style. As a philosopher, critic, and artist, Plato embodied what it meant to be an author to Pater, who imitated his creative practice from vision to expression. For Pater Platonism was also a point of contact with his contemporaries, including Matthew Arnold and Oscar Wilde, offering a means to take new measure of their literary relationships. Using the interdisciplinary critical tools of Pater's own educational milieu which combined literature, philosophy, and classics, The Platonism of Walter Pater repositions the importance Pater's contribution to literature and the history of ideas.

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9780198848530

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Throughout his engaging discussion of Pater's highly 'personal' Platonism, Lee offers a 'new portrait of Pater' (p. 251), depicting the growth of a complex mind whose Platonic affinities shed new light on the 'curiosity and desire of beauty' (Pater, Renaissance, qtd on p. 41) which Aestheticism so strongly projected onto the Hellenic past. * Charlotte Ribeyrol, Sorbonne Université, Studies in Walter Pater and Aestheticism *

Throughout his engaging discussion of Pater's highly 'personal' Platonism, Lee offers a 'new portrait of Pater' (p. 251), depicting the growth of a complex mind whose Platonic affinities shed new light on the 'curiosity and desire of beauty' (Pater, Renaissance, qtd on p. 41) which Aestheticism so strongly projected onto the Hellenic past. * Charlotte Ribeyrol, Sorbonne Universite, Studies in Walter Pater and Aestheticism *

Author Information

Adam Lee is an Assistant Professor at Tyndale University, Canada. He has a D.Phil in English Language and Literature from the University of Oxford, specializing in the late-Victorian era. He has taught a range of courses at Sheridan College, including Composition and Rhetoric, Greek Mythology, and Canadian Literature; and currently he teaches literature from Classics to contemporary at Tyndale University, in Toronto, Canada.

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