Aesthetic and Critical Theory of John Ruskin

✍ Scribed by George P. Landow

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2015
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 496
• Series: Princeton Legacy Library; 1359
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book traces the sources and development of Ruskin's aesthetic and critical theories. In his attempt to skirt the danger of excessive emotion and association in art, Ruskin's struggle with the sublime but not the picturesque, is, along with the pathetic fallacy, examined. These concepts, too, are considered in light of Ruskin's continuing religious and intellectual development. Finally, Ruskin's loss of faith is analyzed in relation to the problem of allegory in art. Ruskin argued for an unchanging standard of beauty, though the psychological nature of the artist is related to his art medium.

Originally published in 1971.

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✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Contents
Preface
List of Illustrations
Introduction
1: Ruskin's Theory of the Sister Arts
I. Ruskin and the Tradition of ut Pictura Poesis
II. The Use and Moral Value of Art
III. Ruskin's Conception of Painting and Poetry as Expressive Arts
IV. Conditions of the Alliance
V. Implications of the Alliance
2: Ruskin's Theories of Beauty
I. Ruskin's Refutation of "False Opinions Held Concerning Beauty"
II. Ruskin's Theory of Typical Beauty
III. Ruskin's Theory of Vital Beauty
3: Ruskin's Theories of the Sublime and Picturesque
I. Ruskin's Theory of the Sublime
II. Two Modes of the Picturesque
4: Ruskin's Religious Belief
I. Ruskin's Evangelical Belief
II. Loss of Belief
III. The Return to Belief
IV. Religion, Man, and Work
5: Ruskin and Allegory
I. Ruskin and Nineteenth-Century Attitudes Toward Allegory
II. Ruskin's "Language of Types" and Evangelical Readings of Scripture
III. Typological Symbolism in the Readings of Ruskin's Childhood
IV. The Symbolical Grotesquetheories of Allegory, Artist, and Imagination
V. Myth as Allegory
VI. Ruskin's Allegorical Interpretations of Turner
VII. "Constant Art" and the Allegorical Ideal
Index