The Arts inVictorian Literature: AnIntroduction STEFANO EVANGELISTA and CATHERINE MAXWELL University of Oxford andQueen Mary,University ofLondon Overthepastforty years orso there hasbeena steady increase inattention to theVictorian arts,and significant conferences havehelpedfoster continuing discussion, bringing together literary scholars,culturalcommentators, art historians, and musicologists.1 Interest in material culture has also generated newwaysof exploring thecomplexlinksbetween literature and arthistory, contributing to theongoing redefinition of therelationship between objects, criticism, and literary texts.2 However, thiscollection aimsto do something slightly different, beingfocused notmerely ontheVictorian arts butontheway thattheartsingeneral maketheir markonVictorian literature. Thisincludes therepresentation, treatment, ordiscussion ofthearts inVictorian literary texts, theinterchange betweenliterary and otherartforms, thecreative dialogue between practices ofwriting, reading, viewing, andhearing, andanalysis ofhow theartsinform thework ofparticular literary figures. Thuswhilereaders will find accounts ofspecifically Victorian artworks suchasillustrations ofDickens's work and thepaintings and designs ofthePre-Raphaelites, they willalsofind discussions of howleadingwriters and commentators of theperiodviewed antiquesculpture, Renaissance painting, andRussian music, orusedtheseand other artforms toconsider issues suchastheroleofthefemale artist oroperatic primadonna,thedifferent meansof musicalappreciation, and therelations between thearts. 1 Examples of academic studiesof thisfieldinclude TheSunis God:Painting, Literature andMythology inthe Nineteenth Century, ed. byj. B. Bullen (Oxford:Clarendon Press,1989)^. B. Bullen, ThePre-Raphaelite Body:Fearand DesireinPainting, Poetry, and Criticism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998); Victorian Literature andtheVictorian Visual Imagination, ed. by Carol T. Christand John O.Jordan (Berkeley:Universityof California Press, 1995); Kate Flint,The Victorians andtheVisual Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2000); Lynda Nead, The HauntedGallery: Painting, Photography, Filmc. igoo (New Haven, CT: Yale UniversityPress,2007);Jonah Siegel, DesireandExcess:TheNineteenth-Century Culture ofArt(Princeton,NJ: PrincetonUniversityPress, 2000); Julia Thomas, Pictorial Victorians: The Inscriptions of Valuein Word andImage(Athens: Ohio UniversityPress, 2004); PhyllisWeliver,Women Musiciansin Victorian Fiction: Representations ofMusic,Science andGender inthe Leisured Home (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001); The Figureof Music in Nineteenth-Century BritishPoetry, ed. by Phyllis Weliver (Aldershot:Ashgate2005); Phyllis Weliver,TheMusicalCrowd inEnglish Fiction, 1840-igio: Class,Culture andNation (Basingstoke:Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). 1The mostrecentstudyof thefieldfromthepointof view of materialaestheticsis thecollectionIllustrations, Opticsand Objectsin Nineteenth-Century Literary and VisualCultures, ed. by Luisa Calè and Patrizia Di Bello (Basingstoke:Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). 2 TheArts in Victorian Literature: AnIntroduction In spiteofthediverse nature ofthesefourteen essays, wehavebeenstruck bythemanyinterconnections. Withthisinmindwe haveresisted theobvious temptation toclassify theessays intogroups according totopics suchaspainting, sculpture, andmusic, opting instead fora broadly chronological sequencethat emphasizes morelocalizedconnections with regard tospecific writers, themes, motifs, and ideas.Byrefusing thegratification of easyclassifications, sucha sequence asksreaders towork a little harder, butwehopethat thereward comes ina larger andricher setofproductive interfiliations. Readingtheessays, itis hard not to noticethe way thatcertainnamesrecur:Tennyson, Ruskin, Swinburne, Pater, andVernon Lee areperhapsthemostevident, followed by others suchas GeorgeEliot,Hawthorne, Gautier, andWhistler. Someofthese areunsurprising - itwouldbe oddnottofind Ruskin mentioned frequently in a volume ofthis kind, although hisappearances hereas a commentator onthe Crystal Palace,asintheessay by JonahSiegel, orasanadvocate for the'suggestive , visionary, andeclectic' inBurne-Jones, asdiscussed byColinCruise, areless thanfamiliar, reminding us thathe resists easycategorization. It isfitting that Swinburne, whoinhiscentenary year(2009)hasbeenthesubject ofrenewed discussion, should occupy a prominent position aslyric singer andas influential aesthetic criticin therespective essaysby ElizabethHelsinger and Stefano Evangelista aswellasfeature inincidental discussions byCatherine Maxwell and Lene 0stermark-Johansen. However, it is perhapsSwinburne's immediate successor andinheritor, Walter Pater, whomaybe saidtobe thetutelary genius ofthis collection. Pater's leading questions inthePreface to TheRenaissance are onesthatin their appealto theindividual's subjective tastes and preferences strike especially resonant chords for modern readers andcritics: What isthis song orpicture, this engaging personality presented inlife orina book, to me? What effect doesitreally produce onme? Doesitgive mepleasure? andifso,what sort ordegree ofpleasure? Howismy nature modified byitspresence, andunder its influence?3 Several oftheessays inthis volume engage with these seminal questions asked byPater, which areattheheart ofa widespread desire torethink thedynamics andvalueoftheencounter with artinthenineteenth century. Pater's emphasis onpleasure rather thanutility ordidacticism, andhisbelief intheprime roleof thesenses (hearing andtouchas wellas sight) inshaping ourknowledge ofthe arts haveexercised a formative influence onwriters andcritics that stretches well intothetwentieth century. Aestheticism and itslegaciesare topicsthathave attracted a substantial amount ofattention inrecent years.4 Butwhilea large 3WalterPater,TheRenaissance: Studies inArtandPoetry, ed. byDonald L. Hill (Berkeley: University of California Press,1980),pp. xix-xx (emphasisoriginal). 4 See, forexample,Richard Dellamora, Masculine Desire:TheSexualPolitics of Victorian Aestheticism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990); Dennis Denisoff, Aestheticism and Sexual Parody,1840-1940 STEFANOEVANGELISTA & CATHERINEMAXWELL 3 numberof our contributors engage withvariousaspectsof Aestheticism, and thusimplicitly deal withthematterof subjectiveinterpretation, theissueof the shapingintelligence or imaginationof theviewer, reader,or hearercan be...