The Rhetorical Use of Provocation as a Means of Persuasion in the Writings of Walter Pater (1839-1894), English Essayist and Cultural Critic: Pater as Controversialist

Abstract

John Coates's recent study on Walter Pater reads as the criticism of one long acquainted with his subject. The volume is a collection of already published essays, the first, ‘Aspects of the Intellectual Context of Pater's Imaginary Portraits’, was published in 1985 and the latest in 2008. A concentration of three-quarters of the total twelve, however, was published between 2004 and 2008. Each essay gives the felicitous impression of analysis begun enthusiastically, taken up from various angles on different texts with renewed energy.This same method is a strength in some of Pater's own volumes. Although many Pater critics will already be familiar with some of these essays—for there are no significant changes in them—reading them in a single collection is a convenient enjoyment. Part of the enjoyment belongs to the breadth of writing covered throughout Pater's career, so that the reader is provided with a sample from all stages in Pater's work, from essays in The Renaissance (1873) through to the final chapter on Lacedaemon in Plato and Platonism (1893). All of Pater's genres are treated, also, from his criticism and reviews in collections such as Appreciations (1889) and Greek Studies (1895), to his fictional Imaginary Portraits (1887) and ‘The Child and the House’ (1878), his novels Marius the Epicurean (1885) and Gaston de Latour (1888, 1896), his published lectures on Prosper Mérimée and Plato, and even an unpublished essay, ‘The Writings of Cardinal Newman’. As Coates moves chronologically through Pater's career he portions off particular passages and treats them with such care and closeness that it leaves the impression of actually reading Pater. Coates's attention derives from the belief that, ‘Ideally, [Pater’s] writing requires (as it most certainly deserves) an almost linear commentary’ (391). Pater as Controversialist will increase and clarify the understanding of Pater both for newcomers and those already familiar with him.