Style as the Man: The Aesthetics of Self-(Re)construction in Pater, Wilde, and Yeats

This essay investigates some significant interconnections between Walter Pater's Epicureanism, Oscar Wilde's dandyism, and W. B. Yeats's theory of the anti-self mask. These terms represent their most important aesthetic ideals of self-cultivation or self-(re)construction. Aesthetic theories applied in this study include those developed by Baumgarten, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, and early modern British moralists such as Shaftesbury and Hume.First of all, the three writers' most typical aesthetic views emphasize, in various degrees, the sensuous, perceptive, and bodily aspects of human existence. While Pater and Wilde were inclined to treat the body as an ornament for display, Yeats, shortly after the turn of the century, extolled bodily energy displayed in heroic, physical actions. The different concepts of the ”body” held by these three writers form the basis of the methods they recommend for self-remaking. For Pater, an ideal artist of life should try to perfect his own personality by cultivating a perceptive and meditative mind. Following Pater, Wilde recommends pursuing a contemplative life, and he finds a rich inner life more fulfilling. In contrast, Yeats's aesthetic paradigm looks for self-fulfillment in terms of action.The issues raised in Part II center on the idea that the aesthetic partakes of both the rational and sensuous, a concept shared by many German and French thinkers. Pater, Wilde, and Yeats follow this aesthetic idealism and yet try to revise and even undermine this heritage. From this concept they develop three important views: the autonomy of the moral agent and the possibility of incorporating the rational and the ethical with the aesthetic or uniting truth and goodness with beauty; the need to modify external, social law to accommodate the needs and pursuit of happiness of each individual; and the importance of constructing one's own subjective, epistemological world.Part III discusses the three writers' ”aesthetic historicism,” a kind of enlarged historical/critical understanding, which they regard as a prerequisite for aesthetic self-cultivation. In fact, the paradigms of aesthetic existence they recommend all demonstrate refined aesthetic taste and critical acumen achieved through the cultivation of sophisticated historical insight. The concluding section discusses the three writers' theories of artistic self-expression, which they relate not only to literary creativity but, more importantly, to modes of self-actualization. This ”expressivism” forms the basis of their concept of a fuller individuation.