Letters to workmen? Fors Clavigera, Whistler vs. Ruskin and Sage criticism in crisis
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Abstract
Questioning recent critics' rehabilitation of Fors Clavigera, this article argues that because its defining features were extreme violence and self-contradiction, Ruskin's epistolary periodical was doomed to the disaster that befell it when Whistler sued him for libel. For whilst targeting artisan readers, Fors betrayed their trust with its prohibitive pricing and sales methods, incoherence, cryptic and coercive confessionalism, and Carlylean misanthropy towards subjects and correspondents alike. Thus, echoing Blackwood's notorious persecution of Keats, Fors branded Whistler and the evolutionist Huxley "Cockneys," and Ruskin fatally regressed to the level of the scurrilous periodical reviewers against whom his identity as "sage" had always been defined.
Keywords
Fors Clavigera, Periodicals, Ruskin, Sage criticism, Self-contradiction, Whistler
Source Title
Prose Studies
Publisher
Series/Report No.
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Date
2001
DOI
10.1080/713662180
Type
Article