Vernon Lee's Problem with Landor
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Authors
Wong, Alex T
Abstract
This article considers some fundamental elements of Vernon Lee’s critical theory by focussing attention on her criticisms of Walter Savage Landor, whose ‘classical’ or ‘rhetorical’ style she attributes to the writer’s lack of ‘feeling’. Her arguments show the subtle ways in which aesthetics and ethics were connected in her thought, and give a relatively distinct view of her literary values. Amid growing debate about the ‘personal’ and ‘impersonal’, about ‘objectivity’ and ‘subjectivity’, in art and criticism, Lee was influenced particularly by Walter Pater. The present essay attempts to clarify her intellectual relationship to her contemporaries and to nascent ‘modernist’ values.
Description
Keywords
47 Language, Communication and Culture, 4705 Literary Studies
Journal Title
The Cambridge Quarterly
Conference Name
Journal ISSN
0008-199X
1471-6836
1471-6836
Volume Title
45
Publisher
Oxford University Press