The Pre-Raphaelite Body: Fear and Desire in Painting, Poetry, and Criticism

by J.B. Bullen

Pre-Raphaelitism was the first avant-garde movement in Britain. It shocked its first audience, and as it modulated into Aestheticism it continued to disturb the British public. This interdisciplinary study traces the sources of this critical reaction to the representation of the body in painting and poetry from the work of Millais and Morris to that of Rossetti and Burne-Jones. The book also explores how reactions were conditioned by such late nineteenth-century anxieties as fear of cholera and hatred of Catholicism, fascination with the fallen woman, horror at the `shrieking sisterhood' of emancipated women, and even the terror of psycho-sexual diseases.

Genres: Pre Raphaelite, Art

256 pages, Hardcover

First published April 23, 1998

Reviews

[Lucinda · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best parts are those on the meaning of colour and its bodily associations in painting to the Victorian audience