Introduction : innocence and rapture -- "Doomed creatures of immature radiance" : Renaissance, death, and rapture in Walter Pater -- Narcissists anonymous : reading and Dorian Gray's new worlds -- "Blameless and foredoomed" : innocence and haste in The turn of the screw -- Sentimentality, desire, and aestheticism in Lolita
Summary
Focusing on works by Pater, Wilde, James, and Nabokov, Kevin Ohi explores the concept of the erotic child in Aestheticism. He compares the erotic child of these authors to the innocent child propogated by today's ideology, and argues that for these authors, the child served as an emblem for the ecstatic, erotic, and even queer possibilities of art
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 207-216) and index
