Art's "background of flame" and the Paterian temperament of art

honors thesisCollege of HumanitiesEnglishMatthew PotolskyThis thesis examines how Walter Pater uses hot and cold imagery in his descriptions to further his understanding of art, arguing that it contains both beauty and commentary, whether social, political, etc. Beginning with Studies in the History of the Renaissance, Pater associates heat with the sensuality of the body and cold with the morality of the soul. Cold represents, more specifically, the monopoly of the Catholic Church on morality and its condemnation of the body, because of its sensual susceptibility to sin. His Imaginary Portraits "Denys L'Auxerrois," "Duke Carl of Rosenmold," and "Apollo in Picardy" explore the potential of microcosmic renaissances located in particular towns, with a singular instigator of the Renaissance spirit. Unlike the Renaissance, these instigators lack widespread support, because of the moral backlash to their progressive and uninhibited embrace of the sensual. Notably, each of these tales ends in the individual motivator's death. In Pater's final work, the posthumously published and unfinished novel, Gaston de Latour, heat loses its totally positive connotations and morality, whether codified in religion or not, proves to be a positive and negative motivator, depending on the actor. The novel epitomizes art in that the necessary balance between the body and the soul-the hot and the cold-will always remain incomplete for man. Art provides the arena for man to recognize and understand his whole self, physical, emotional, social, and political