Quaint, exquisite: Victorian aesthetics and the idea of Japan
From the opening of trade with Britain in the 1850s, Japan occupied a unique and contradictory place in the Victorian imagination, regarded as both a rival empire and a cradle of exquisite beauty. Quaint, Exquisite explores the enduring impact of this dramatic encounter, showing how the rise of Japa...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Book |
| Language: | English |
| Subito Delivery Service: | Order now. |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
Princeton Oxford
Princeton University Press
[2019]
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| In: | Year: 2019 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Japan
/ Aesthetics
/ Reception
/ Great Britain
B Japan / Art / Aesthetics / Reception / England / Great Britain |
| Further subjects: | B
Aesthetics, Modern 19th century
B Aesthetics, Japanese B Arts, British Japanese influences B Arts, British 19th century B LITERARY CRITICISM / Comparative Literature B Art, Japanese 19th century |
| Online Access: |
Cover (Verlag) Cover (Verlag) Inhaltsverzeichnis (Aggregator) Volltext (doi) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Parallel Edition: | Non-electronic
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| Summary: | From the opening of trade with Britain in the 1850s, Japan occupied a unique and contradictory place in the Victorian imagination, regarded as both a rival empire and a cradle of exquisite beauty. Quaint, Exquisite explores the enduring impact of this dramatic encounter, showing how the rise of Japan led to a major transformation of Western aesthetics at the dawn of globalization. Drawing on philosophy, psychoanalysis, queer theory, textual criticism, and a wealth of in-depth archival research, Grace Lavery provides a radical new genealogy of aesthetic experience in modernity. She argues that the global popularity of Japanese art in the late nineteenth century reflected an imagined universal standard of taste that Kant described as the “subjective universal” condition of aesthetic judgment. The book features illuminating cultural histories of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado, English derivations of the haiku, and retellings of the Madame Butterfly story, and sheds critical light on lesser-known figures such as Winnifred Eaton, an Anglo-Chinese novelist who wrote under the Japanese pseudonym Onoto Watanna, and Mikimoto Ryuzo, a Japanese enthusiast of the Victorian art critic John Ruskin. Lavery also explains the importance and symbolic power of such material objects as W. B. Yeats’s prized katana sword and the “Japanese vellum” luxury editions of Oscar Wilde. Quaint, Exquisite provides essential insights into the modern understanding of beauty as a vehicle for both intimacy and violence, and the lasting influence of Japanese forms today on writers and artists such as Quentin Tarantino Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface: Another Empire: Victorian Japan -- Introduction: Analytic of the Exquisite -- 1. Not About Japan -- 2. All Margin -- 3. The Pre-Raphaelite Haiku -- 4. Loving John Ruskin -- 5. The Sword and the Chrysanthemum -- Notes -- Index -- Illustration credits |
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| Physical Description: | 1 Online-Ressource (xvi, 219 Seiten), Illustrationen |
| Format: | Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web. |
| ISBN: | 069118996X |
| Access: | Restricted Access |
| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1515/9780691189963 |