The Living Death of Antiquity
Neoclassical Aesthetics
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 23762323 |
|---|---|
| Authors | William Fitzgerald (0000-0003-2828-8432, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Publication date | 2022-02-10 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | BOOK |
| Venue | Living Death of Antiquity (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/oso/9780192893963.001.0001 |
| OpenAlex | W4220774102 |
| ISBN | 9780192893963 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
This book is about the idealization of an antiquity that exhibits, in the words of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, ‘a noble simplicity and quiet grandeur’. It discusses the aesthetics of this strain of neoclassicism as manifested in a range of work in different media and periods but focusing on the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. John Flaxman’s engravings on the Iliad and the sculpture of Antonio Canova and Bertel Thorvaldsen are analysed and illustrated, as are earlier and later manifestations of the same aesthetic in French Parnassian poetry, in Satie’s setting of Plato, and in the ancient collection of sympotic poetry known as the Anacreontea . Fitzgerald describes the potential challenge of a neoclassical aesthetics of simplicity and ‘whiteness’, and its tendencies to corruption. He characterizes the lingering presence of this version of antiquity as a ‘living death’.
Art · Art history · Epistemology · Idealization · Literature · Poetry · Sculpture · Simplicity · History · Literature: history, themes, analysis · Philosophy
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0.75 |
| Citation span | 2022 - 2025 (4) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |