Aestheticism in Zadie Smith's On Beauty and Donna Tartt's The Secret History
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18485/bells.2025.17.12Keywords:
Aestheticism, Zadie Smith, Donna Tartt, art, beautyAbstract
As a movement that values form over function/purpose, Aestheticism remains relevant to discussions about the role of beauty. Writing somewhat in the tradition of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Zadie Smith and Donna Tartt explore the function of beauty in literature, as well as in academic circles. The stance that academia takes regarding beauty has frequently suffered from excessive theorizing. Smith’s approach seems to satirize aesthetic discussions about art, which occur mostly within university lectures. Meanwhile, Tartt’s ideas of l’art-pour-l’art-ism are exaggerated and grow so stripped of context that they result in tragedy. In both novels, Aestheticism is criticized for its tendency to be hermetic, and academia’s ruminations on beauty further deconstruct the movement’s core ideas and credos.
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