Aestheticism

Abstract

Aestheticism is a movement for the promotion of aesthetic autonomy and the doctrine of art for art's sake. Aesthetes criticized the realist, moral, and didactic biases of mainstream Victorian literature. Important authors associated with aestheticism include Michael Field, Henry James, Vernon Lee, Ouida, Walter Pater, Algernon Charles Swinburne, John Addington Symonds, and Oscar Wilde. Many of these writers experimented in creating new forms of dialogue between literature and visual and material culture, as well as between literature and criticism. Aesthetic writers challenged dominant gender ideology by openly depicting female sexual desire and by offering a sympathetic portrayal of homosexuality. Aestheticism's critique of aesthetic autonomy was influential for the development of modernism.