When Oscar Wilde said he had "seen wallpaper which must lead a boy
brought up under its influence to a life of crime," his joke played on
an idea that has often been taken quite seriously--both in Wilde's day
and in our own. In Fateful Beauty, Douglas Mao recovers the lost
intellectual, social, and literary history of the belief that the
beauty--or ugliness--of the environment in which one is raised
influences or even determines one's fate. Weaving together readings in
literature, psychology, biology, philosophy, education, child-rearing
advice, and interior design, he shows how this idea abetted a dramatic
rise in attention to environment in many discourses and in many
practices affecting the lives of the young between the late nineteenth
century and the middle of the twentieth. Through original and detailed
analyses of Wilde, Walter Pater, James Joyce, Theodore Dreiser,
Rebecca West, and W. H. Auden, Mao shows that English-language writing
of the period was informed in crucial but previously unrecognized ways
by the possibility that beautiful environments might produce better
people. He also reveals how these writers shared concerns about
environment, evolution, determinism, freedom, and beauty with
scientists and social theorists such as Herbert Spencer, Hermann von
Helmholtz, Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, and W.H.R. Rivers. In so doing, Mao
challenges conventional views of the roles of beauty and the aesthetic
in art and life during this time.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9781400832804
Publisert
2013
Utgiver
Vendor
Princeton University Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter