Burning, Burial, and the Critique of Stoicism in Walter Pater’s Marius the Epicurean

Abstract

Observes the common critical practice of describing Marius’ intellectual path towards Christianity in Pater’s novel as a Hegelian progression in which Stoicism and Epicureanism operate as thesis and antithesis, with Christianity as the synthesis. Believes most readings have tended to underestimate the significance of Marcus Aurelius’ Stoicism as both the vehicle for the advancement towards Christianity and as the object of critique; Pater implicitly critiques such admirers of Marcus Aurelius as Arnold and Mill, and the broad phenomenon of Victorian Stoicism, by showing the emperor to be both ineffectual and to a surprising degree politically compromised. Discusses how the novel’s critique of both Stoicism and Epicureanism and its progress toward early Christianity occur through a set of death, dying, and mourning scenes in which Pater dramatizes how both Stoics and Epicureans insufficiently conceptualize death and improperly treat dead bodies by burning them after death, contradicting Pater’s version of second-century Christianity, which promises the resurrection of the dead and requires burial. Claims burial itself is a gesture of hope in the novel, and the ritual that precedes it is a means for Marius himself to join, if incompletely, a Christian community at the end.