Matthew Potolsky
Biographic Data
| ID | 1133663 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Matthew Potolsky |
| GIVEN NAMES | Matthew |
| FAMILY NAME | Potolsky |
| SIGNATURE | POTOLSKY M |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 24 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 10 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 4 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1880 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
The Cambridge Companion to Walter Pater
This is the first and only comprehensive introductory study of Walter Pater, novelist, short story writer, literary critic, and philosopher. One of the late nineteenth century's most important and least understood writers, Pater evinced a new mode of hedonism that presented a fundamental challenge to the prevailing moral and social norms of his contemporaries, responding to post-Darwinian sensibility, waning faith, and new philosophies in ethics …
Pater on Ancient Art and Mythology
This chapter focuses on Pater as a classicist, placing his writings on the classical world and mythology in the context of the changing face of classical education at his contemporary Oxford, under Benjamin Jowett. It illustrates that Pater was sympathetic to dominant understandings of the classical world, but, beginning in the mid-1870s, began to explore darker and more subversive aspects of ancient Greek culture, including the myths of Demeter …
Entangled Autonomy
This essay approaches nineteenth-century theories of aesthetic autonomy by considering four texts published by the British aesthete Walter Pater in 1886. It has long been argued that the French and British aesthetes demanded total autonomy for the artist and the artwork, insisting that beauty should have nothing to do with the more sordid aspects of life. Pater, this essay argues, had a more nuanced view of autonomy. In the texts from 1886, he de…
Dekadents ja realism / Decadence and Realism
Verisimilitude
In this article, I argue for giving renewed attention to the concept of verisimilitude, a term popular in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century criticism but which has since the nineteenth century become a mere synonym for realism in fiction and film. It will be my argument that verisimilitude has long existed in Western critical theory as an alternative form of realism and that we gain theoretical dividends by recognizing it as such. Thus reframed…
Decadence and Realism
This essay proposes a new understanding of the widely recognized disdain for realism and the realist novel among decadent writers, a disdain most critics have interpreted as a protomodernist celebration of artifice. Focusing on Oscar Wilde's dialogue “The Decay of Lying,” the essay argues instead that decadent antirealism is antimodern, embodying a repudiation of contemporary society. Decadent writers regard realism not as hidebound and tradition…
The Collected Works of Walter Pater, Vol. 8
Fin de Siècle
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
Mimesis
A topic that has become increasingly central to the study of art, performance and literature, the term mimesis has long been used to refer to the relationship between an image and its ‘real’ original. However, recent theorists have extended the concept, highlighting new perspectives on key concerns, such as the nature of identity. Matt Potolsky presents a clear introduction to this potentially daunting concept, examining: the foundations of mimet…
The Absence of Theory
Perennial Decay
When Oscar Wilde was convicted of gross indecency in 1895, a reporter for the National Observer wrote that there was not a man or a woman in the English-speaking world possessed of the treasure of a wholesome mind who is not under a deep debt of gratitude to the marquis of Queensberry for destroying the high Priest of the Decadents. But reports of the death of decadence were greatly exaggerated, and today, one hundred years after the famous trial…
Crise de Vers (a Soie)
MLN - Volume 110, Number 4, September 1995 (Comparative Literature Issue)
Shadwell's 'Preface' to Greek Studies (1895)
"Shadwell's 'Preface' to Greek Studies (1895)" published on by null.
I. The Heroic Age of Greek Art
"I. The Heroic Age of Greek Art" published on by null.
Mimesis
A topic that has become increasingly central to the study of art, performance and literature, the term mimesis has long been used to refer to the relationship between an image and its ‘real’ original. However, recent theorists have extended the concept, highlighting new perspectives on key concerns, such as the nature of identity. Matt Potolsky presents a clear introduction to this potentially daunting concept, examining: the foundations of mimet…
Fin de Siècle
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
I. The Heroic Age of Greek Art
"I. The Heroic Age of Greek Art" published on by null.
Shadwell's 'Preface' to Greek Studies (1895)
"Shadwell's 'Preface' to Greek Studies (1895)" published on by null.
Crise de Vers (a Soie)
MLN - Volume 110, Number 4, September 1995 (Comparative Literature Issue)
Perennial Decay
When Oscar Wilde was convicted of gross indecency in 1895, a reporter for the National Observer wrote that there was not a man or a woman in the English-speaking world possessed of the treasure of a wholesome mind who is not under a deep debt of gratitude to the marquis of Queensberry for destroying the high Priest of the Decadents. But reports of the death of decadence were greatly exaggerated, and today, one hundred years after the famous trial…
The Absence of Theory
Mimesis
A topic that has become increasingly central to the study of art, performance and literature, the term mimesis has long been used to refer to the relationship between an image and its ‘real’ original. However, recent theorists have extended the concept, highlighting new perspectives on key concerns, such as the nature of identity. Matt Potolsky presents a clear introduction to this potentially daunting concept, examining: the foundations of mimet…
Fin de Siècle
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
The Collected Works of Walter Pater, Vol. 8
Decadence and Realism
This essay proposes a new understanding of the widely recognized disdain for realism and the realist novel among decadent writers, a disdain most critics have interpreted as a protomodernist celebration of artifice. Focusing on Oscar Wilde's dialogue “The Decay of Lying,” the essay argues instead that decadent antirealism is antimodern, embodying a repudiation of contemporary society. Decadent writers regard realism not as hidebound and tradition…
Verisimilitude
In this article, I argue for giving renewed attention to the concept of verisimilitude, a term popular in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century criticism but which has since the nineteenth century become a mere synonym for realism in fiction and film. It will be my argument that verisimilitude has long existed in Western critical theory as an alternative form of realism and that we gain theoretical dividends by recognizing it as such. Thus reframed…
Entangled Autonomy
This essay approaches nineteenth-century theories of aesthetic autonomy by considering four texts published by the British aesthete Walter Pater in 1886. It has long been argued that the French and British aesthetes demanded total autonomy for the artist and the artwork, insisting that beauty should have nothing to do with the more sordid aspects of life. Pater, this essay argues, had a more nuanced view of autonomy. In the texts from 1886, he de…
Dekadents ja realism / Decadence and Realism
The Cambridge Companion to Walter Pater
This is the first and only comprehensive introductory study of Walter Pater, novelist, short story writer, literary critic, and philosopher. One of the late nineteenth century's most important and least understood writers, Pater evinced a new mode of hedonism that presented a fundamental challenge to the prevailing moral and social norms of his contemporaries, responding to post-Darwinian sensibility, waning faith, and new philosophies in ethics …
Pater on Ancient Art and Mythology
This chapter focuses on Pater as a classicist, placing his writings on the classical world and mythology in the context of the changing face of classical education at his contemporary Oxford, under Benjamin Jowett. It illustrates that Pater was sympathetic to dominant understandings of the classical world, but, beginning in the mid-1870s, began to explore darker and more subversive aspects of ancient Greek culture, including the myths of Demeter …
Art (7 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Aesthetics (4 works) · Classical Antiquity Studies (4 works) · Decadence, Literature, and Society (4 works) · Literature (4 works) · Epistemology (3 works) · Period (music) (3 works) · Philosophy (3 works) · Art history (2 works)