Pater and the Poetics of Nachleben. Meta-psychology and semiology of poetic language

Linguistic and stylistic analysis, along with a Bloomian approach to influence, are the tools of Massimo Stella’s close reading of Pater’s texts in “Walter Pater and the Poetics of Nachleben. Meta-Psychology and Semiology of Poetic Language”, whose deep-seated comparative approach provides a broad overview of the cultural networks – spanning from classical literature to Modernism – which have contributed to both the genesis and the reception of Pater’s work. Stella’s essay especially focuses on Pater’s constant and even obsessive re-enactment of Antiquity, and the possibility that it may be regarded as a mode of knowledge. Starting from an assessment of such an idea, Stella probes into the relationship between myth, form, and figure, on the one hand, and style on the other.