Aestheticism and Realism/Naturalism: Joyce and the Moderns

FAIN: FB-13056-77

Marquerite Harkness
Virginia Commonwealth University (Richmond, VA 23284-9005)

To study the effects of the conflict between Aestheticism and Naturalism/Realism on major writers of the early twentieth century, especially Joyce. Each modern writer chose his art forms and themes, adapting and adopting what seemed useful from these two conflicting aesthetic systems. The writer's resolution of the conflict tells his readers something of his art and something of his perceptions of life. A study of this conflict and its many resolutions in major figures such as Woolf, Forster, Yeats, Conrad, and Eliot demonstrates the interaction of cultural obsessions and difficulties, and artistic theories.