A Turning Point

Walter Pater’s Dante

Abstract

This essay investigates Walter Pater’s reception of Dante. From his juvenile production to his later writings, Pater’s oeuvre is interspersed with references, quotations, or allusions to Dante, and often directly discusses important aspects of the poet and his works. Pater strongly sensualises Dante’s idea of love, which he sees as functional to his own exploration of sensoriality. In this sense, his reading of Dante emphasises the features of Dante’s realism (and symbolism) that are closer to his own poetics, interpreting them as emblematic of his artistic ideal of the fusion of matter and spirit. Moreover, Pater views Dante as instrumental in some of the cultural-historical phenomena – the Renaissance, Romanticism, modernity – which are pivotal for his aestheticist conception of history.