This volume of essays on Walter Pater thinks about Pater's contribution to the development of English Studies, with the first part of the collection addressing Pater's contribution to English Studies and literary criticism, and the second part focusing on Pater's engagement with various English writers, including William Blake. Pater's engagement with art criticism informed his way of reading English and the way literature relates to other types of media. The edited collection places Blake among other artists and writers within English literary tradition who were key influences on the development of Pater's views.
The Spiritual Form
Luisa Calè's chapter, '"Spiritual Form': Walter Pater's Encounters with William Blake' (pp.198-215) details how in discussions of form, style, meaning, soul, and mind, Pater refers to Blake. In an 1871 exhibition, Blake's tempera TheSpiritual Form of Pitt was displayed at the Royal Academy, and in 1876, The Spiritual Form of Nelson and The Spiritual Form of Napoleon were displayed at the Burlington Fine Arts Club. Calè examines the importance of the arts in formalising Pater's literary criticism, and her contribution to the collection reconstructs how Pater's Blake 'identifies a discipline of literary form that defies the separation of literature as a distinct aesthetic domain' (199). The discussion about spiritual form, specifically, anchors around the similarities between Pater's 'search for the primitive mystical union of the spirit with nature' (206) and Blake's idea of embodied enthusiasm deriving from Swedenborg. Although Blake only expresses a 'spiritual body' in the Swedenborgian sense once, Pater attributes this to Blake in his essay, 'A Study of Dionysus: The Spiritual Form of Fire and Dew' (first published, 1876). After comparing Pater's response to Blake's spiritual forms, Calè concludes that Pater intervenes to discard the negative ideas surrounding 'spiritual form' as instruments of political imposition. But rather, for Pater, this form releases a utopian potential of restoring the eternal body, or what Blake describes as the Human Form Divine (210).
Embodied Aesthetics
Blake informed the way Pater observed and understood other painters and writers, most evident in the way Pater thinks about embodied aesthetics. Calè describes the way Pater views this as a composite experience where multiple historical moments can co-exist (199), and this is visible in the way Blake appears in Pater's writings. For example, Calè explains how Pater redefines Johann Winckelmann's classical aesthetic ideals to encompass an embodied relationship between surface and depth. In doing so, Pater discussion translates 'the concept of carnal form into an emblem for the fusion of the arts' (201) which feeds into this idea of embodied aesthetics. Pater then takes Blake to criticise periodisation and revitalise the past. Blake's appeal to Pater lies in the way the former rebalances division of the faculties and compresses both artist and poet together. In doing so, Blake promotes a visionary art which 'articulates an aesthetic politics for modern literature' (211).
Blake's Job
At the heart of this chapter is Plate 14 from Blake's Illustrations of the Book of Job (1825), titled 'When the morning Stars sang together, & all the Sons of God shouted for joy.' The discussion begins with how Pater juxtaposes Blake with Edward Burne-Jones in an essay on Demeter and Persephone, before acknowledging the impact of Plate 14 on the Pre-Raphaelites. Calè extends the discussion to how Pater specifically uses Blake's Illustrations of Job to visualise the visionary potential of aesthetic criticism (205). The chapter then continues with revealing how Pater associates both Blake and Burne-Jones with a form of vicarious participation and re-enactment of a promise of utopian sexual freedom.
In this short chapter, Calè covers the roots of Pater's embodied aesthetics and how he rethinks the boundaries between art and literature via Blake. By drawing on the Swinburnian critical account of Blake and Pater's reception of Swinburne, Calè situates Blake's significance in the development of literary and artistic aesthetics during the nineteenth century. As a contribution to this volume on Pater and English Studies, it is clear that the influence of Blake is not to be underestimated in the development of an aesthetic politics for modern literature.