Entangled Autonomy: Walter Pater in 1886

This essay approaches nineteenth-century theories of aesthetic autonomy by considering four texts published by the British aesthete Walter Pater in 1886. It has long been argued that the French and British aesthetes demanded total autonomy for the artist and the artwork, insisting that beauty should have nothing to do with the more sordid aspects of life. Pater, this essay argues, had a more nuanced view of autonomy. In the texts from 1886, he depicts figures who believe themselves to be wholly independent but who come to realize that they are entangled in their relationships with other people and the world. These texts put a special emphasis on the social and political dimensions of autonomy through their attention to the culture of the seventeenth century (a period in which modern ideas of liberty and individuality came into focus) and to diaries and other personal writings.