Ruskin’s Grotesque: Praeterita as Dantesque Journey to the Real

Abstract

Examines the rhetoric of Praeterita as a means of explaining how word paintings in the text are aimed not at establishing a unified subjectivity of the author but rather a depiction of the world beyond the self. Links Ruskin’s work with that of his models, Byron’s Don Juan and Dante’s Divine Comedy, and points out similarities between Praeterita and Proust’s Recherche.