Strange Sisters : Literature and Aesthetics in the 19th century

This collection of essays stems from the Conference on Nineteenth-Century Literature and Aesthetics held at the University of Milan in 2009, and organised by the editors of the present volume. The interface between word and image covered in these essays embraces the fields of literature, architecture, painting, photography, music and art criticism. The authors stress the role of aestehtics in a number of contexts, ranging from the early 1830s to the fin de siècle and beyond, as far as the last influences of Victorian taste in the early years of the XXth century. During the XIX centurythe ancient intercation between literature and aesthetics was challenged and criticised by Martineau, Rossetti, Ruskin, Pater, Wilde, Beardsley, Cameron and Carroll, among others: their awareness of the complexity of visual perception problematised the existing categories of realism, art conventions, the discourse of description, translation and representation. Thus these essays focus on the intersection of word and image by emphasising transgressions in art hierarchies, forms and languages, which restyle existing categories and project them into new artistic dimensions, beyond the conventional idea of the sister arts.