Study guide n°9: Aesthetic literature

Activities:
Please read the sources proposed and do research to answer the following questions:
a- What is understood by Aestheticism and who were its major exponents in England? How was it expressed in
visual arts?
b- How did it contrast with the outlook proposed by writers inscribed in the Condition-of-England tradition? To
what new social and international situation did it respond?
c- What is understood by symbolism? What did the French Symbolists propose by the end of the 19th century?
d- Who was Oscar Wilde and why are his literature and his public figure relevant today?

Literary reading:
Wilde, Oscar. “The Nightingale and the Rose”
a- Carry out a symbolic reading of “The Nightingale and the Rose”.

Integration:
What historical forces propel changes in literary production in end of the 19 th century in the UK? What genres rise in
response to the historical moment? How do literary works assess their times?

A- It’s a late 19th-century European arts movement which centred on the doctrine that art exists for the sake of
its beauty alone, and that it need serve no political, didactic, or other purpose. The movement began in
reaction to prevailing utilitarian social philosophies and to what was perceived as the ugliness and philistinism
of the industrial age.

In England, the artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, from 1848, had sown the seeds of Aestheticism,
and the work of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, and Algernon Charles Swinburne exemplified it
in expressing a yearning for ideal beauty through conscious medievalism. The attitudes of the movement were
also represented in the writings of Oscar Wilde and Walter Pater and the illustrations of Aubrey Beardsley in
the periodical The Yellow Book.

In the visual arts, the concept of art for art's sake was widely influential. Many of the later paintings of Dante
Gabriel Rossetti, such as Monna Vanna, are simply portraits of beautiful women that are pleasing to the eye,
rather than related to some literary story as in earlier Pre-Raphaelite paintings.
A similar approach can be seen in much of the work of Sir Edward Burne-Jones, whose The Golden Stairs
captures the aesthetic mood in its presentation of a long line of beautiful women walking down a staircase,
devoid of any specific narrative content. The designer William Morris, another disciple of Rossetti, created
beautiful designs for household textiles, wallpaper, and furniture to surround his clients with beauty.

Aestheticism | Oscar Wilde, Decadence & Symbolism | Britannica

The Aesthetic Movement (article) | Khan Academy

b. The division of society and the poverty of the majority began to dominate the minds of the intelligentsia
following the 1832 Reform Act. They called this the "Condition-of-England Question". This was closely linked
to a growing sense of anger at the culture of amateurism in official circles which produced this misery. The
question preoccupied both Whigs and Tories. The historian John Prest has written that the early 1840s
witnessed "the middle of structural changes in the economy, which led many to question whether the country
had taken a wrong turn. Would manufacturing towns ever be loyal? Was poverty eating up capital? Was it safe

1
to depend upon imports for food and raw materials? Could the fleet keep the seas open? Or should the
government encourage emigration and require those who remained behind to support themselves by spade
husbandry? These were the ‘condition-of-England’ questions".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condition-of-England_question

C- Symbolism, a loosely organised literary and artistic movement that originated with a group of French poets
in the late 19th century, spread to painting and the theatre, and influenced the European and American
literatures of the 20th century to varying degrees. Symbolist artists sought to express individual emotional
experience through the subtle and suggestive use of highly symbolised language.
The French Symbolists were A group of late 19th-century French writers, including Arthur Rimbaud and
Stéphane Mallarmé, who favoured dreams, visions, and the associative powers of the imagination in their
poetry. They rejected their predecessors’ tendency toward naturalism and realism, believing that the purpose
of art was not to represent reality but to access greater truths by the “systematic derangement of the senses,”
as Rimbaud described it. The translated works of Edgar Allan Poe influenced the French Symbolists.
Symbolist works had a strong and lasting influence on much British and American literature in the 20th
century, however. Their experimental techniques greatly enriched the technical repertoire of modern poetry,
and Symbolist theories bore fruit both in the poetry of W.B. Yeats and T.S. Eliot and in the modern novel as
represented by James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, in which word harmonies and patterns of images often take
preeminence over the narrative.
Symbolism | Literary, Visual & Cultural Impact | Britannica
Symbolist Movement | Poetry Foundation

D. Oscar Wilde was an Irish playwright, poet, and author who lived in the late 19th century. He is celebrated
for his wit, clever writing, and his role as a prominent figure in the Aesthetic and Decadent movements. His
works, characterised by sharp wit and satire, explore timeless themes such as identity, societal norms, and the
pursuit of social status, which continue to resonate with modern readers. Furthermore, Wilde’s open
homosexuality in a repressive era makes him an enduring icon, symbolising resilience and advocacy for equal
rights, His life story serves as a reminder of the ongoing struggle for acceptance and inclusion.

His distinctive writing style, marked by clever wordplay and witty dialogue, continues to inspire modern writers
and artists. Additionally, Wilde’s flamboyant persona and unique fashion sense remain iconic in popular
culture, embodying non-conformity and individualism, further cementing his enduring relevance in the 21st
century.

Oscar wilde and the Plaistow Matricide (word in the classroom)

Integration:
Many scholars argue that the rise of the middle/working-class, “with its emphasis on social fluidity and
individual self-determination,” led to increased literacy, reading, and thus production and consumption of
novel-like texts.

While the novel was the dominant form of literature during the Victorian era, poets continued to experiment
with style and methods of story-telling in their poems. Examples of this experimentation include long
narrative poems (epic poems) and the dramatic monologue as seen primarily in the writing of Robert
Browning.

2
3