The Aesthetic and Critical Theories of John Ruskin

George P. Landow, Professor of English and the History of Art, Brown University

The Aesthetic and Critical Theories of John Ruskin

[Victorian Web Home —> Authors —> John Ruskin]

Chapter One: Ruskin's Theories of the Sister Arts

  • Ruskin and the tradition of ut pictora poesis
  • The use and moral value of art
  • Ruskin's conception of painting and poetry as expressive arts
  • Conditions of the alliance
  • Implications of the alliance

    Chapter Two: Ruskin's Theories of Beauty

  • Ruskin's refutation of "False Opinions Held concerning Beauty"
  • Ruskin's theory of Typical Beauty
  • Ruskin's theory of Vital Beauty

    Chapter Three: Ruskin's Theories of the Sublime and Picturesque

  • Ruskin's theory of the sublime
  • Two modes of the picturesque

    Chapter Four: Ruskin's Religious Belief

  • Ruskin's Evangelical belief
  • Loss of belief
  • The return to belief
  • Religion, man, and work

    Chapter Five: Ruskin's and Allegory

  • Ruskin and nineteenth-century attitudes toward allegory
  • Ruskin's "language of types" and Evangelical readings of scripture
  • Typological symbolism in the readings of Ruskin's childhood
  • The Symbolical Grotesque — theories of allegory, artist, and imagination
  • Myth as allegory
  • Ruskin's allegorical interpretations of Turner
  • "Constant art" and the allegorical ideal

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    Created 8 October 2023