The Pre-Raphaelite Body

Download or read book The Pre-Raphaelite Body written by J. B. Bullen and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pre-Raphaelitism was the first avant-garde movement in Britain. It shocked its first audience, and as it modulated into Aestheticism it continued to disturb the British public. This interdisciplinary study traces the sources of this critical reaction to the representation of the body in painting and poetry from the work of Millais and Morris to that of Rossetti and Burne-Jones. The book also explores how reactions were conditioned by such late nineteenth-century anxieties as fear of cholera and hatred of Catholicism, fascination with the fallen woman, horror at the `shrieking sisterhood' of emancipated women, and even the terror of psycho-sexual diseases.