The Dialectics of Sense and Spirit in Pater and Joyce (No. 12 in 1880-1920 British Authors Series) (British Authors 1880-1920 Vol 12)

Modernist scholars have written a handful of comparative studies on Pater and Joyce. Frank Moliterno's *The Dialectics of Sense and Spirit in Pater and Joyce* is the first book-length exploration into the aesthetic development of these writers that underscores the importance of Pater in Joyce's works. Much of Pater's and Joyce's aesthetics evolves from the dialectical tension between the sensual and the spiritual. The Paterian-Joycean syntheses of basic antinomies--religion and sensuality, empiricism and idealism, Aristotelian mimesis and aestheticism--result in kindred theories of art.

Moliterno's highly readable account of the intellectual affinity between the two authors searches their relationship and Joyce's potential debt to Pater. In four main chapters Moliterno discusses the transition of Pater and Joyce from priests to artists and the parallel ways they portray this process in fiction; traces the Paterian elements of the aesthetics of Stephen Dedalus and of the mature Joyce; compares Pater's epiphanies with Joyce's to reveal how Pater helped shaped the Joycean epiphany; and analyzes the similar epistemologies behind the development of Pater's and Joyce's aesthetics.

To some they may seem an odd match. Joyce, who sought to mirror the everyday lives of Dubliners through revolutionary literary techniques, appears to have little in common with Pater, the precious "father of aestheticism," precursor of Wilde and other aesthetes who detested the mimesis Joyce championed. As Moliterno's book reveals, however, Pater has more in common with Joyce in this regard than with the aesthetes of the fin de siM-hcle.

Says Perry Meisel (New York University), Frank Moliterno's *The Dialectics of Sense and Spirit in Pater and Joyce* helps to complete a movement in modernist scholarship that is long overdue--the demonstration of Walter Pater's central importance as High British Modernism's chief Victorian precursor. Moliterno presents often eye-opening accounts of Pater's decisive significance for Joyce in both his personal development and in the literary achievement that stems from it. The Dialectics of Sense and Spirit is essential reading for all students of modernism in literature.