Author Description

This Book Demonstrates That The So-called Lesser Decorative Arts Transformed The Representational Logic And The Prose Style Of The Novel In The Late Nineteenth Century. It Builds From William Morris's Statement That All Real Art Is Ornamental, Acknowledging That Ornament Is The Heart And End Of The Artistic Gesture. The Book Grounds Itself Historically In Theories And Practices Of Decorative Arts Developed In The Middle Of The Nineteenth Century, A Moment When Victorian Designers Overhauled The Reigning Principles Of Ornamentation. Developing A New Canon Of Design Theory, This Study Shows That Ornament Is Useful: It Furnishes A New Concept Of The Real And A Method For Engaging It-a Realism. Rather Than Pictorial, Gritty Particularity And Exhaustive Detailing, Decorative Designers Used Abstraction To Probe Features Of Reality Otherwise Missed. These Potencies Carried Into The Novel. Wallpaper Patterns, Hinge-work, And Stained Glass: Such Designs Express Principles Of Visual Form-including Symmetry, Repetition, And Conventionalization-that Novelists Transform Into Literary Principles, Into Syntax. The Resulting Ornamental Prose Brings Representational Possibilities Not Otherwise Available. George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, A.c. Swinburne, Oscar Wilde, And D.h. Lawrence Use Ornamental Techniques To Liberate Into Language The Mechanics Of Perception, The Laws Guiding A Body's Relationships To Its Surroundings, The Patterns Of The Mind, And The Dynamics Of Individuation. In Recognizing Ornament's Contributions To Realism, To The Form Of The Novel, And To Our Formalisms Of The Novel, Ornament, The Novel, And The Victorian Real Corrects A Long-standing Equation Of Ornament With Fantasy, Empty Excess, Or Decadence.