[Gutenberg 4060] • The Renaissance: studies in art and poetry

[Gutenberg 4060] • The Renaissance: studies in art and poetry
Authors
Pater, Walter
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Tags
renaissance , philosophy , renaissance -- italy , history , writing , art , arts , poetry
ISBN
9780192835536
Date
1873-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Size
0.16 MB
Lang
en
Downloaded: 52 times

'To burn always with this hard gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.'

*The Renaissance* (1873) at once became the touchstone for the decadent imagination for a generation of Oxford undergraduates. Pater was shocked at the reaction his book inspired: 'I wish they would not call me a hedonist, it gives such a wrong impression to those who do not know Greek.'.

The book had begun as a series of idiosyncratic, impressionistic critical essays on those artists that embodied for him the spirit of the Renaissance; by collecting them and adding his infamous Conclusion, Pater gained a reputation as a daring modern philosopher. But *The Renaissance* survives as one of the most innovative pieces of cultural criticism to emerge from the nineteenth century.