Re Framing The Pre Raphaelites

"Re-framing the Pre-Raphaelites is a collection of essays by leading scholars in the field of Pre-Raphaelite studies. Some essays are case studies of well-known visual and literary works by founder members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; others explore meanings generated by Pre-Raphaelite works on specific themes and define the cultural work done by them. There are essays on John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ford Madox Brown, Joanna Boyce, Edward Burne-Jones and other artists associated with the Pre-Raphaelites. Among the subjects discussed are gender, class, ethnicity, national and regional identity, patronage, the position of the professional woman artist, the nude, images of women and the Victorian cult of death. Some of the authors treat their chosen subject in a mainly art-historical context with a focus on new scholarly research. A number of the essays, in contrast, are informed by post-structuralist, feminist and psychoanalytic theories. These theoretical approaches lead the reader to consider both familiar and lesser-known works in new, and often controversial, frameworks and should provoke further theoretical and historical debate in this field." "Several of the essays are based on papers given at the Pre-Raphaelite session of the 1994 Conference of the Association of Art Historians."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Pre-Raphaelitism's influence during the long nineteenth century was far-reaching, affecting artistic and literary thought in places, media, and times far removed from its origins in 1848 London. Worldwide Pre-Raphaelitism examines the movement's development beyond England, from the continental "immortals" glorified by the nascent Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood to later reactions against and in sympathy with the ideals of the movement after it had ended. This collection of essays by art historians, literary critics, fashion historians, women's studies scholars, and independent researchers from around the world enhances our understanding of the global impact of Pre-Raphaelitism on the art-historical and literary developments of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, formed in 1848 by the young Millais, Holman Hunt and Rossetti, has long been recognised as a high point in Victorian artistic production. But whilst we know much of the private lives of Pre-Raphaelite artists and writers and their best-known paintings are very familiar, their work (and particularly their visual imagery) has attracted limited attention from art historians and critical theorists. This collection redresses the situation with a series of detailed critical and historical studies of individual issues and productions, artistic and literary, relative to Pre-Raphaelitism. Using rigorous new critical analysis, the book throws new light on the ways in which the Pre-Raphaelites addressed philosophical, religious, political and social questions. It will be essential reading for all students of Victorian art, literature and ideas.--Back cover.

This illustrated book focuses on the Pre-Raphaelite artists and their radical departure from artistic conventions. Barringer explores the meanings encoded in Pre-Raphaelite paintings and analyses key pictures and their significance within the complex social and cultural matrix of 19th century Britain.

This unique collection demonstrates the profoundly interdisciplinary nature of Pre-Raphaelitism, and contains contains whole texts and key extracts from key Pre-Raphaelite figures such as William Morris, and from less well-known figures.

In Victorian England, with the country swept up in the Industrial Revolution, the Pre-Raphaelites, close to William Morris’ Arts and Crafts movement, yearned for a return to bygone values. Wishing to revive the pure and noble forms of the Italian Renaissance, the major painters of the circle (such as John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt) favoured realism and biblical themes over the academicism of the time. This work, with its captivating text and rich illustrations, describes with enthusiasm this singular movement which notably inspired Art Nouveau and Symbolism.

During his sojourn in England during the 1870s, a young Cavafy found himself enthralled by the aesthetic movement of cosmopolitan London. It was during these years that he encountered the canvases and personalities of Pre-Raphaelite painters, including Burne-Jones and Whistler, as well as works of aesthetic writers who were effecting a revolution in British literary culture and channeling influences from France that would gradually coalesce into an international decadent movement. In Reframing Decadence, Peter Jeffreys returns us to this critical period of Cavafy’s life, showing the poet’s creative indebtedness to British and French avant-garde aesthetes whose collective impact on his poetry proved to be profound. In the process, Jeffreys offers a critical reappraisal of Cavafy’s relation to Victorian aestheticism and French literary decadence. Foremost among the tropes of decadence that captivated Cavafy were the decline of imperial Rome, the rise of Christianity, and the lingering twilight of Byzantium. The influence of Walter Pater on Cavafy’s view of classical and late-antique history was immense, inflected as it was with an unapologetic homoerotic aesthetic that Cavafy would adopt as his own, making Pater’s imaginary portraits an important touchstone for his own historicizing poetry. Cavafy would move beyond Pater to explore a more openly homoerotic sensuality but he never quite abandoned this rich Victorian legacy, one that contributed greatly to his emergence as a global poet. Jeffreys concludes by considering Cavafy’s current popularity as a gay poet and his curious relation to kitsch as manifest in his ongoing popularity via translation and visual media.

Drawing on recent theoretical developments in gender and men?s studies, Pre-Raphaelite Masculinities shows how the ideas and models of masculinity were constructed in the work of artists and writers associated with the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Paying particular attention to the representation of non-normative or alternative masculinities, the contributors take up the multiple versions of masculinity in Dante Gabriel Rossetti?s paintings and poetry, masculine violence in William Morris?s late romances, nineteenth-century masculinity and the medical narrative in Ford Madox Brown?s Cromwell on His Farm, accusations of ?perversion? directed at Edward Burne-Jones?s work, performative masculinity and William Bell Scott?s frescoes, the representations of masculinity in Pre-Raphaelite illustration, aspects of male chastity in poetry and art, Tannh?er as a model for Victorian manhood, and masculinity and British imperialism in Holman Hunt?s The Light of the World. Taken together, these essays demonstrate the far-reaching effects of the plurality of masculinities that pervade the art and literature of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.