This cultural study reveals the interdependence between British Aestheticism and late-Victorian social-reform movements. Following their mentor John Ruskin who believed in art's power to civilize the poor, cultural philanthropists promulgated a Religion of Beauty as they advocated practical schemes for tenement reform, university-settlement education, Sunday museum opening, and High Anglican revival. Although subject to novelist's ambivalent, even satirical, representations, missionary aesthetes nevertheless constituted an influential social network, imbuing fin-de-siecle artistic communities with political purpose and political lobbies with aesthetic sensibility.
| ISBN: | 9781403945693 |
| Publication date: | 22nd November 2005 |
| Author: | Diana Maltz |
| Publisher: | Palgrave Macmillan an imprint of Palgrave Macmillan UK |
| Format: | Hardback |
| Pagination: | 290 pages |
| Series: | Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture |
| Genres: |
Literary theory Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 Cultural studies European history The arts: general topics Literature: history and criticism |