Read complete books and articles on: Pre-Raphaelites

Pre-Raphaelites - prēˌ-răfˈēəlītsˌ, brotherhood of English painters and poets formed in 1848 in protest against the low standards of British art. The principal founders were D. G. Rossetti, W. Holman Hunt, and John Millais. In poetry as well as painting, the Pre-Raphaelites turned away from the growing materialism of industrialized England. They sought refuge, through literary symbolism and imagery, in the beauty and comparative simplicity of the medieval world. In the works of the Italian painters prior to Raphael, they found a happy innocence of style that they tried to imitate. Influenced by the Nazarenes, a similar group of German painters founded in Rome in 1810, the Pre-Raphaelites declared themselves devotees of nature and truth. In the early 1850s their works were violently criticized, first by Charles Dickens, as being vulgar and ugly. They were defended by John Ruskin and attracted numerous followers, among whom were Edward Burne-Jones, G. F. Watts, and William Morris, but the group disbanded after 1853 and the movement died out before the end of the century. The paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites are characteristically nostalgic in tone and bright in color. Despite their predilection for simplicity, they were highly meticulous in detail and mannered in style. Eventually their painting became as artificial as the historical painting they had organized to protest. There is a fine collection of Pre-Raphaelite works at the Wilmington Society of the Fine Arts, Del.

See J. D. Hunt, The Pre-Raphaelite Imagination (1969); J. Nicoll, The Pre-Raphaelites (1970); L. Stevenson, The Pre-Raphaelite Poets (1972); J. Sambrook, ed., Pre-Raphaelitism: A Collection of Critical Essays (1976); T. Hilton, Pre-Raphaelites (1985); J. Marsh, Pre-Raphaelite Women: Images of Femininity (1988).

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15 of the Best Books and Articles on: Pre-Raphaelites

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

The Pre-Raphaelite Body: Fear and Desire in Painting, Poetry, and Criticism » Read Now
by J. B. Bullen. 260 pgs.

Collections: Philosophy, Literature, Entire Library

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. In this fresh and original study, Professor Bullen traces the sources of that shock to the representation of the human...
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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. In this fresh and original study, Professor Bullen traces the sources of that shock to the representation of the human body. By examining the discourses which were developed to denounce or to explain the new art forms he shows that the distorted, maimed, or eroticized body formed the principal focus of anxiety in nineteenth-century criticism. Using a truly interdisciplinary method he relates the painting of Millais and other early Pre-Raphaelites to fears about cholera and Catholicism; he demonstrates how the body of the sexualized female became an object of obsessive fascination in the painting and poetry of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris; he locates the writing of Swinburne and Prater in the context of the debate over the `Woman Question', and he shows how the responses to the `Aesthetic' painting of Burne-Jones were conditioned by the sexual psychopathology of mid nineteenth-century mental science.
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2.

Pre-Raphaelite Painters » Read Now
by Robin Ironside, John Gere. 152 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library
3.

The Pre-Raphaelite Poets » Read Now
by Lionel Stevenson. 330 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
4.

A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century (1901) (Chap. VII "The Pre-Raphaelites") » Read Now
by Henry A. Beers. 436 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
5.

John Ruskin and Effie Gray (1947) (Chap. X "Enter the Pre-Raphaelites") » Read Now
by William James. 292 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
6.

Christina Rossetti: A Portrait with Background » Read Now
by Marya Zaturenska. 320 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
7.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti: A Victorian Romantic » Read Now
by Oswald Doughty. 736 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
8.

The "Bird in the Cage" in the History of Sexuality: Sir John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt, in Journal of the History of Sexuality » Read Now
by Elaine Shefer. 35 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library
9.

Our English Coasts, 1852: William Holman Hunt and Invasion Fear at Midcentury, in Art Journal » Read Now
by Jonathan P. Ribner. 10 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library
10.

William Holman Hunt's The Scapegoat: Rite of Forgiveness/Transference of Blame, in The Art Bulletin » Read Now
by Albert Boime. 21 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library
11.

Careers and Creativity: Social Forces in the Arts (Chap. 2 "The Pre-Raphaelites") » Read Now
by Harrison C. White. 237 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
12.

The Pre-Raphaelites, in Victorian Poetry » Read Now
by Florence S. Boos. 13 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
13.

The New Path: Ruskin and the American Pre-Raphaelites, in The Nation » Read Now
by Arthur C. Danto. 4 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library
14.

Portrait of William Morris » Read Now
by Esther Meynell. 276 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
15.

Camelot in the Nineteenth Century: Arthurian Characters in the Poems of Tennyson, Arnold, Morris, and Swinburne » Read Now
by Laura Cooner Lambdin, Robert Thomas Lambdin. 180 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

For centuries, accounts of King Arthur and his court have fascinated historians, scholars, poets, and readers. Each age has added material to reflect its own cultural attitudes, but no era has supplemented the earlier versions more than the poets of the Medieval Revival of nineteenth-century...
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For centuries, accounts of King Arthur and his court have fascinated historians, scholars, poets, and readers. Each age has added material to reflect its own cultural attitudes, but no era has supplemented the earlier versions more than the poets of the Medieval Revival of nineteenth-century England. This book examines how Arthurian legend was read and rewritten during that period by four enduring writers: Alfred Lord Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, William Morris, and Algernon Charles Swinburne. While other works have looked at Arthurian legend in light of nineteenth-century social conditions, this volume focuses on how these poets approached love and death in their works, and how the legend of Arthur shaped their vision.
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