On Pater's Late Style.

By Nineteenth-Century Prose

Release Date: 1997-09-22
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines

Description

Many critics have agreed that Pater's characteristic position in all his writing is that of the "latecomer" (in Harold Bloom's well-known formulation). This position as the end of a long critical tradition may be appreciated more fully if seen as a mobile and internally differentiated set of positions, and in this sense Pater's stance may be seen as a determining feature both of his style and of his view of style. With a focus primarily on Pater's late essay, "Style" (1888), this argument seeks to analyze Pater's "late" stance, its relation of a critical present to its many pasts, and Pater's view of style as personal and historical expression. In the end, it offers a new reading of the famous critical crux at the end of "Style," a reading in which Pater's distinction between "good art" and "great art" is seen not as a retrenchment from an earlier position but as a familiar shift of focus from the personal to the historical register of style. **********

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