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Inconclusions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2021

Koenraad Claes
Affiliation:
Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge
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Summary

Fifty years and thirteen periodicals later, a narrative has emerged for the early history of the little magazine genre, which has revealed itself to have developed alongside the diverse but overlapping schools of aesthetic theory, literary writing and artistic practice that are now commonly designated as Aestheticism. The Germ of Aestheticism was also that of the little magazine in Britain, and arguably even of the avant-garde position on which both (initially) relied. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood established their periodical organ in order to circulate their art and opinions without having to defer to the authority of external editors, and to sidestep the demands of a market intent on the short-term profit that they neither could nor wished to guarantee. In doing so, they established a basic format for such low-circulation periodicals issued by groups of heterodox self-declared artistic and literary dissidents, or the avant-garde, in their challenge to a perceived alliance of commercial, aesthetic and ideological orthodoxy, jumbled together in the equally vague category of the mainstream. This dualism was applied opportunistically, but it underpinned the rhetoric of all avant-garde output, periodical or otherwise.

Aestheticism, as said in the Introduction to this book, is an umbrella term covering a host of divergent opinions, but one shared doctrine is that the sphere of art is potentially expansive and should be made to cover as many aspects of individual and social life as possible. Already in the context of The Germ, the individual contribution was presented as potentially autonomous but not meant to function only on its own; the magazine as carrier of the content was designed so as to add coherence to the text and a combined meaning and aesthetic value that is greater than the sum of its parts: a first step towards the ideal of the Total Work of Art. When adopting The Germ's early little magazine model, subsequent groups would integrate into their periodical projects ever more aspects of its publication context and surroundings, going beyond the integration of content into a common ideological and artistic system soon after, when the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine added a political dimension to this still fundamentally artistic concept. This stimulated the incorporation of the magazine's production methods into the artistic process in later little magazines.

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Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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  • Inconclusions
  • Koenraad Claes, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge
  • Book: The Late-Victorian Little Magazine
  • Online publication: 28 April 2021
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  • Inconclusions
  • Koenraad Claes, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge
  • Book: The Late-Victorian Little Magazine
  • Online publication: 28 April 2021
Available formats
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To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Inconclusions
  • Koenraad Claes, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge
  • Book: The Late-Victorian Little Magazine
  • Online publication: 28 April 2021
Available formats
×