1st Edition

Anglo-German Interactions in the Literature of the 1890s

By Patrick Bridgwater Copyright 1999

    This is a study of what the main "aesthetic" writers of late 19th-century Britain made of German literature, and of how Germany in turn reacted to them. The impact of Anglo-Scottish art nouveau in fin-de-siecle Austria and Germany made it predictable that Keats, Pater and Rossetti, among others, would be well received, but no one could have known in advance that by the time of their deaths, Swinburne and Wilde would be more highly regarded in Germany than in Britain. Bridgwater's documented study casts light on the central cultural issues of the day, including ideas of morality, truth and subjectivism in art, comparing Pater and Wilde with Nietzsche, and George Moore, that chameleon of the decadent 90s, with Schopenhauer.

    1: Introduction; 2: Walter Pater’s Aesthetic Germanism; 3: Oscar Wilde and Germany: Germany and Oscar Wilde; 4: William Meinhold and the English Novel; 5: A Pre-Raphaelite Cult Classic; 6: The Reception of Keats in Germany; 7: The Pre-Raphaelite Poets and Germany; 8: George Moore and Schopenhauer; 9: Masked Men: Nietzsche, Pater and Wilde

    Biography

    Patrick Bridgwater