As a teacher of Plato in Oxford's Literae Humaniores, Walter Pater was informed by philosophy from his earliest essays to his last book. The Platonism of Walter Pater examines Pater's deep engagement with Platonism throughout his career. It overturns his reputation as a superficial aesthete known
mainly for his "Conclusion" to The Renaissance to reposition his contribution to literature and the history of ideas.
In his criticism and fiction, including his studies on myth, Pater was influenced by several of Plato's dialogues. Phaedrua, Symposium, Theaetetus, Cratylus, and The
Republic informed his philosophy of beauty, history, myth, knowledge, ethics, language, and style. As a philosopher, critic, and artist, Plato embodied what it meant to be an author to Pater, who imitated his creative practice from vision to expression. For Pater Platonism was also a point of
contact with his contemporaries, including Matthew Arnold and Oscar Wilde, offering a means to take new measure of their literary relationships.
Using the interdisciplinary critical tools of Pater's own educational milieu which combined literature, philosophy, and classics, The Platonism
of Walter Pater repositions the importance Pater's contribution to literature and the history of ideas.
Introduction
1. Strange Beauty
2. The Ethics of Contemplation in 'Wordsworth'
3. From Myth to Logos in Greek Studies
4. Paideia, or Platonic Education, in Marius the Epicurean
5. Platonic Communion and 'An Unfinished Romance' in Gaston de Latour
6. The Revelation in Plato
and Platonism and the Authority of Affinity
The Book
The Authority of Affinity
Conclusion
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Adam Lee is a Lecturer at Tyndale University, Canada. He has a D.Phil in English Language and Literature from the University of Oxford, specializing in the late-Victorian era. He has taught a range of courses at Sheridan College, including Composition and Rhetoric, Greek Mythology, and
Canadian Literature; and currently he teaches literature from Classics to contemporary at Tyndale University, in Toronto, Canada.
Making Sense - Margot Northey
Visionary Philology - Matthew Sperling
Pater the Classicist - Edited by Charles Martindale, Stefano Evangelista and Elizabeth Prettejohn
