William Morris

The theme of this study is almost as old as human kind when the first myths were told. But what makes this study interesting is not only that we, modern people, are still interested in myths but my focus on how one person’s perspective of myths can massively influence another person, in this case Benjamin Thorpe’s influence on William Morris. Focusing on the Victorian Era, this paper describes the ancient influence of myths on an old era of literature written in a modern perspective, including the religious aspects of each time.
  This study makes a significant contribution to the literature because it focuses on the Victorian Era where people began, again, exploring the world and its myths from another point of view. Even though Christianity has settled, and the religious faith was kept sacrosanct, exploring myths and its religious link was explored from a cultural and nationalistic point of view.

Rezeption AUFSATZSAMMLUNG 11-2 William Morris in the twenty-first century / Phillippa Bennett and Rosie Miles (ed.).-Oxford ; Bern [u.a.] : Lang, 2010.-XIX, 287, [16] S. : Ill. ; 23 cm.-(Cultural interactions ; 20).-ISBN 978-3-0343-0106-0 (falsch) : EUR 57.50 [#1727] Der englische Sozialist und Utopist William Morris gehört zu den faszinie-rendsten Gestalten des Viktorianismus. Einerseits ein radikaler Gegner vie-ler viktorianischer Wertvorstellungen, war Morris doch auch jemand, der nicht unerheblich zu unserem Bild der Kunst und Literatur des Viktorianis-mus beigetragen hat. Nicht zuletzt die zahlreichen graphischen Designs, mit denen auch die Abbildung auf dem Cover des vorliegenden Bandes spielt, haben eine ungeahnte kulturelle Verbreitung erfahren-Morris' Tapetende-signs finden sich heute auf zahlreichen Utensilien wie Geschenkpapier, No-tizbüchern und vielem mehr. Die dem Band beigefügten Abbildungen, dar-unter auch solche des Künstlers David Mabb, zeigen (z.B. Abb. 19) ein Mor-ris Kitsch Archive von 2008, mit Kissen, Tassen, Vorhängen, Schürzen, Re-genschirmen, Krawatten, Sofas, Taschen, Teekannen etc. mit Morris-Designs. Man kann hier ohne weiteres von einer äußerst erfolgreichen und vielgestaltigen Kommerzialisierung der künstlerisch-handwerklichen Schöp-fungen des utopischen Sozialisten sprechen. Welche Ironie der Geschichte! Andererseits mag man sich dabei trösten, daß Morris kaum unglücklich dar-über gewesen sein dürfte, seine schönen Designs wenigstens als Erinne-rung an ästhetische Prinzipien vorhanden zu wissen. Die ästhetische Dimension des Werks von Morris wird im ersten Teil des Bandes anhand der Architektur und der städtebaulichen Utopie aufgegriffen, ein Bereich, in dem man mit einigem Recht sagen kann, daß Morris' Vorstellungen von der Ge-staltung der Umwelt eine gewisse Aktualität haben. Im zweiten Teil wird die Arts and Crafts-Tradition mit Blick auf Morris thema-tisiert, etwa die Stickereien u.ä. Der dritte Teil konzentriert sich wieder mehr auf politische Themen, u.a. auf die Ökotopie-Tradition im Gefolge Morris', wobei jedoch die einschlägige Studie von Jan Hollm leider nicht berücksich

Acclaimed and influential, the pre-Raphaelite artist and author William Morris’s long narrative poem The Story of Sigurd and the Fall of the Niblungs (1876) fits, at first sight, the Victorian interpretation of the Old Norse world. It is essentially a world deprived of the original context, where the heroes were re-moulded within the contemporary frame. However, as the story goes, Sigurd’s life gradually drifts away from that of a Victorian conventional hero: unlike other Old-Norse-made-Victorian heroes preceding him, he fell prey to the power of the dark—the Niblungs or ‘the Cloudy people’. In this case, is he still a hero? If yes, what sort of hero will he be? It is the goal of this paper to address these questions. They will be approached through three successive steps: the first part will introduce the image of the Victorian Old Norse heroes in general as representations of light in contrast to absolute darkness, represented by the two Baldur-themed narrative poems from the 1860s. In the second, Sigurd’s rise and fall as a conventional Victorian hero will be examined through analysing a series of key events in his life. At last, it will be argued that, instead of being a symbol of perfect light, Sigurd is essentially a hero of the grey—a compromise between the idealised and the real, which accords with Morris’s own life experience and perception of heroism.

During the 1860s William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones worked closely together on the collaborative project of The Earthly Paradise. A lengthy poem written by Morris in the vein of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, The Earthly Paradise was published in three volumes between 1868 and 1870 and was intended to be illustrated throughout with designs by Burne-Jones. Ultimately, the illustrated volumes proved overly ambitious and the poem was published with only a frontispiece by Burne-Jones. However, by this time the artist had undertaken many illustrations for the individual poems that make up the collective narrative, including several for ‘Pygmalion and the Image’, the classical story of the Cypriot sculptor who falls in love with his own creation, which is re-told in Morris’ Earthly Paradise. These designs would form the basis for finished paintings; in the case of Pygmalion and the Image Burne-Jones produced a set of four paintings in 1868-70 and another set in 1875-78, based directly on his illustrations to Morris’ Pygmalion poem. While these paintings are often referred to in accounts of Burne-Jones’ work, they have rarely received any sustained attention. When the works are discussed they are usually given a biographical interpretation, seen as an expression of Burne-Jones’ feelings for the artist Maria Zambaco, with whom he was having an affair when the design for the paintings was worked out. Going beyond such biographical interpretations, this essay seeks instead to closely relate the Pygmalion and the Image paintings to the Morris poem which inspired them, and argue for a textual-visual relationship which has yet to receive the attention it deserves. The essay will explore the relationship between the paintings and the poem, considering aspects such as treatment of the Pygmalion narrative (especially around the climactic transformation scene), compositional and illustrative devices, as well as the degree to which both artists engaged with the Ovidian version of the Pygmalion story, a textual archetype which is again usually neglected in discussions of both Morris’ and Burne-Jones’ treatments of Pygmalion. The essay will therefore consider Morris’ and Burne-Jones’ engagement with the Pygmalion myth as a collaborative project – resulting in one lengthy poem, over forty-five drawings and two sets of paintings – rather than isolating the paintings as expressions of personal romantic desires. Such an approach is especially important given that Burne-Jones and Morris were not alone in treating the Pygmalion myth – William Bell Scott, George Frederic Watts, John William Waterhouse, John Tenniel, Robert Buchanan, Thomas Woolner and Andrew Lang also produced poetic or visual versions of the Pygmalion story. Considering Morris’ and Burne-Jones’ treatments of Pygmalion in relation to these contemporary representations of the myth can help to suggest the cultural appeal of the Pygmalion story, beyond any personal resonance it may have held for the artist or writer. The essay seeks therefore to recover the contemporary inter-textual/visual relationship of Morris’ and Burne-Jones’ original collaborative project, as well as its engagement with textual traditions of Pygmalion, and with other contemporary visual and literary representations of Pygmalion.

This article considers replication, pattern, and repeating structures as a key feature across William Morris's work and thought in the decorative arts and in the art of the book, and focuses on the politics of replication within Morris's vision.

« Dans une lettre datée du 3 janvier 1891, William Morris évoque une « petite aventure typographique en préparation ». L’idée, modeste en apparence, va prendre une ampleur insoupçonnée. »

Comment changer la société et réenchanter le livre ? William Morris, scandalisé par la laideur des livres de l’époque victorienne, entend y parvenir en créant des livres inactuels et néo-gothiques, non pas simples pastiches des siècles passés mais inspirés des manuscrits médiévaux et des premiers incunables de sa bibliothèque personnelle. Livres qui, selon lui, doivent tendre vers la perfection et incarner l’idéal voulu par John Ruskin, à l’image de l’une des plus merveilleuses réalisations du private press movement, le magistral et testamentaire Kelmscott Chaucer, décrit par le peintre préraphaélite Burne-Jones comme une « cathédrale de poche ».

« En fait, un livre, qu’il soit imprimé ou manuscrit, tend tout simplement à être un bel objet, et, le fait qu’à notre époque nous produisions couramment des livres laids prouve assez, je le crains, une intention criminelle, une détermination à garder les yeux fermés en toute occasion. »

Florence Alibert offre ici de découvrir ou de redécouvrir au fil de la vie et des œuvres de l'artiste, la dernière croisade du peintre, dessinateur, homme politique, poète, architecte et imprimeur William Morris, qui séduira nombre de créateurs britanniques, belges ou allemands et ne donnera lieu en France qu’à de timides et partielles expérimentations. Cathédrale et imprimé fusionnent, le livre, à la conception architecturale, devient un tout harmonieux. Et alors qu’il l’évoque parfois avec légèreté, la « petite aventure typographique » de Morris, devenue projet de plus grande envergure, se pose comme une enclave possible contre les conventions de la modernité : « Je voulais imprimer quelques beaux livres. Et je voulais m’amuser. Et je peux dire que j’ai fait les deux. »

« Le 2 juin 1896, Morris, alors très malade, voire mourant, reçut le premier exemplaire de son cher Chaucer qui avait à la fois contribué à le maintenir en vie et à l’épuiser complètement. Sa fille May note au sujet de son père : « il avait l’air profondément mélancolique. Il se retourna vers moi et me sourit tendrement mais semblait se perdre déjà dans une très lointaine contrée […] et tout fut fini quelques temps plus tard. »

Submissions are open for the 6th issue of Fantasy Art and Studies, which will deal with Norse myth in Fantasy fiction. We welcome papers on any Fantasy work (novel, short story, comics, film, TV series, video game) which includes Norse myth themes, motives and/or characters.

"Politique Fiction" is a manifesto that determines the fundamental principles that are expressed by design and the discussions of ideas it has promoted. When design is committed to political action and becomes the synonym of commitment, protest, counter-proposal and utopia.

Fed up with the commercial and moral restrictions of the mainstream press, the diverse avant-garde groups of authors and artists of the Aesthetic Movement developed a new genre of periodicals in which to propagate their principles and circulate their work. Such periodicals are known as ‘little magazines’ for their small-scale production and their circulation among limited audiences, and during the late Victorian period they were often conceptualized as integrated designs or total works of art in order to visually and materially represent the ideals of their producers. Little magazines like the Pre-Raphaelite Germ, the Arts & Crafts Hobby Horse and the Decadent Yellow Book launched the careers of innovative authors and artists and provided a site for debate between minor contributors and visiting grandees from Matthew Arnold to Oscar Wilde. This book offers detailed discussions of the background to thirteen major little magazines of the Victorian era, both situating these within the periodical press of their day and providing interpretations of representative items, in doing so, it outlines the earliest history of this enduring publication genre, and of the Aesthetic Movement that developed along with it.


Key Features:
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* First monograph to focus on the origins and development of the little magazine genre during the Victorian period
* Each chapter provides a representative introduction to the respective little magazines
* Combines new insights with a critical overview of the state of the art on each discussed little magazine

Table of contents
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Introduction
1. The Germs of a Genre: The Germ and the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine
2. Mounting the (Century Guild) Hobby Horse
3. The Little Magazine as a Periodical Portfolio: the Dial, the Pagan Review and the Page
4. Selling the Yellow Nineties: the Yellow Book and the Savoy
5. Politicised Aestheticism outside London: the Quest and the Evergreen
6. Little Excursions Outside the Avant-Garde: the Pageant, the Parade and the Dome
(In)conclusions

Este tese examina a relação entre tradução e edição, dois ofícios mediadores entre um texto e seu leitor cuja ação se confunde e complementa na transmissão das ideias e das obras. Duas linguagens que, a partir de escolhas verbais ou verbo-visuais, dão nova forma a um texto conferindo-lhe novos significados. Duas formas privilegiadas de reescrita que, entre traição e criação, mantêm vivo um texto original ao atualizá-lo em diferentes línguas, tempos e espaços. Num primeiro momento, é observado o modo como se realizam tradução e edição em diferentes períodos da história do livro, e em que medida, ao refletirem valores e ideologias da cultura em que se inscrevem, espelham o modo como se manifesta, nessa cultura, a relação com o Outro, o estrangeiro. Num segundo momento, é enfocada a obra do artista e poeta William
Morris (1834-1896). Tradutor, Morris se destacou por introduzir a literatura nórdica na Inglaterra oitocentista. Editor, produziu com arte, em sua Kelmscott Press, livros que marcaram a história do moderno design editorial. Examina-se aqui, mais detidamente, como se integram tradução e edição num projeto seu de quase vida inteira, a translação das sagas islandesas. E como se integra a translação das sagas com a sua longa busca do livro ideal.

Chapter in G. Brockington (ed.), Internationalism and the Arts in Britain and Europe at the "Fin de Siecle"
This collection of essays stems from the conference ‘Internationalism and the Arts: Anglo-European Cultural Exchange at the Fin de Siècle’ held at Magdalene College, Cambridge, in July 2006. The growth of internationalism in Europe at the fin de siècle encouraged confidence in the possibility of peace. A wartorn century later, it is easy to forget such optimism. Flanked by the Franco-Prussian war and the First World War, the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were marked by rising militarism. Themes of national consolidation and aggression have become key to any analysis of the period. Yet despite the drive towards political and cultural isolation, transnational networks gathered increasing support. This book examines the role played by artists, writers, musicians and intellectuals in promoting internationalism. It explores the range of individuals, media and movements involved, from cosmopolitan characters such as Walter Sickert and Henri La Fontaine, through internationalist art societies, to periodicals, performance, and the mobility of the Arts and Crafts Movement. The discussion takes in the geographical breadth of Europe, incorporating Belgium, Bohemia, Britain, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Poland, Russia and Slovakia. Drawing on the work of scholars from across Europe and America, the collection makes a statement about the complexity of European identities at the fin de siècle, as well as about the possibilities for interdisciplinary research in our own era.