Walter Pater

Marius the Epicurean

His Sensations and Ideas

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

An elaborately written philosophical novel of ancient Rome which incorporates a retelling of Apuleius' story of Cupid and Psyche. It was as a critic and a humanist that Walter Pater (1839-1894), professor at Oxford, led the revival of interest in Renaissance art and humanism, becoming a powerful influence on his own and succeeding generations, claiming disciples as diverse as Virginia Woolf and Ezra Pound. This philosophic novel is generally considered his masterpiece. It is the story of a young man's spiritual and aesthetic awakening in ancient Rome. Marius, a grave and thoughtful man, reacts to the diverse philosophical forces of his times by journeying from Stoicism to Cyrenaicism to Epicureanism, and finally to Christianity. The Golden Book of Lucius Apuleius, the stoicism of Marcus Aurelius, the tranquil beauties of the old Roman religion, and the lurid horrors of the Christian persecution are interestingly and imaginatively depicted. "A style of perfectly finished beauty, full of an exquisite restraint, and, after all, only the fitting and adequate expression of the exactest thinking." --Athenaeum "Any one who cares to think on counsels of perfection for man's life will find profound and original thought about the ideal elements still at hand in modern days for use, and many wise reflections, sown among these pages. It is a rare work and not carelessly to be read. Some exquisiteness of taste, some delight in scholarship, some knowledge of what is best worth knowing in the historic expressions of man's aspiration, and, above all, that 'inward tacitness of mind' the reader must bring to its perusal." --Nation "The polish of the style, the depth and refinement of the thought, the picturesque descriptions, and the lofty sentiment of the book as a whole, together with the beautiful gravity and impressiveness that mark it generally, make it a work far out of the ordinary current of fiction." --Boston Saturday Evening Gazette

Produktdetails

• Verlag: University Press of the Pacific
• Seitenzahl: 364
• Erscheinungstermin: 10. Juni 2003
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 203mm x 127mm x 21mm
• Gewicht: 438g
• ISBN-13: 9781410206640
• ISBN-10: 1410206645
• Artikelnr.: 21545455

Autorenporträt

Walter Horatio Pater was an English essayist, art and literary critic, and fiction writer known as one of the great stylists. His first and most frequently reprinted book, Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873), revised as The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry (1877), in which he outlined his approach to art and advocated for an ideal of intense inner life, was interpreted by many as an Aestheticism manifesto (whether stimulating or subversive). Walter Pater, born in Stepney in London's East End, was the second son of Richard Glode Pater, a physician who migrated to London in the early nineteenth century to practice medicine among the poor. Dr. Pater died while Walter was an infant, and the family relocated to Enfield. Walter attended Enfield Grammar School and was tutored privately by the headmaster. In 1853, he was transferred to The King's School in Canterbury, where the cathedral's magnificence left an impression on him that would last his entire life. He was fourteen years old when his mother, Maria Pater, died in 1854. Pater was a "reading man" in college, with literary and philosophical interests beyond the required readings. His early favourites included Flaubert, Gautier, Baudelaire, and Swinburne. During his vacations, he visited his aunt and sisters in Heidelberg, Germany, where he studied German and began reading Hegel and German thinkers.