Toward An Aesthetic Socialism

William Morris（1834-1896）is a prolific writer,an original artist-craftsman,a successful manufacturer and a zealous socialist activist in the Victorian era.Starting a literary career with poetry,he switched to novel and prose writing in the late 1870s when he was more engaged in socialist activities.This dissertation endeavors to elucidate that underlying this overt sequence is Morris’s deepening skepticism of Victorian modernity,the progression of which consequently steers toward socialism.Through a contextual reading of the selected works from the literary genres he covered,The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs,News from Nowhere,and Socialism:Its Growth and Outcome respectively,this dissertation explores how Morris eventually becomes an aesthetic socialist with his reflection on modernity.This dissertation is composed of five parts.A working definition of“modernity”is firstly elaborated in the introductiory part,serving as the theoretical momentum of this dissertation.It is hard to define“modernity”as there exist around it so many prisms reflected by the multi-layerd and complex discourses.This study maintains that“modernity”should be discussed diachronically with an exploration of its historical origin followed by elaborations on its connotations.A Marxist perspective is adopted among the galaxy of its definitions,which views modernity as the discontinuity of the present from the past emerging conspicuously in the late 18^th century.In the late 19^th century,the tension of discontinuity culminated into a crisis of modernity,which was symptomized as a rising mechanical era,a newborn consumer age,an escalating disparity between the rich and the poor,and an ever forbidding religious crisis,all of which make the target of Morris’s fire.The first chapter focuses on Morris’s saga writing and its connection with Morris’s reflection on Victorian modernity.Morris’s poetic writings begin with medieval themes and ends with Norse themes,which may come from his persistence of medieval aesthetics;however,there is also a thematic shift within the medieval motifs,revealing not only Morris’s preference for Medievalism but also his quest for the cultural roots of Medievalism.With a comparative reading of The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs with The Edda,The Volsung Saga,and The Song of the Nibelungs,especially with a close reading of the revised plots and personified characterization,this chapter tries to track the intention of Morris’s saga-writing.Reconstructing a humanity-oriented causal relationship,Morris projects humanity as the motivating force in plotting,which connotes his humanistic concern over the collapse of religion in the Victorian era.Moreover,Morris endeavors to conserve the literary sources,revealing his intention of fusing Northern sagas with Germanic epics so as to reinvent a heroic tradition for the Victorians in a transitional era.This chapter then further demonstrates that the romantic essence and nostalgic dimension of Medievalism implicate the covert refusal of rationality that the Enlightenment Movement upholds.In this sense,Medievalism is in itself embedded with a rebuke of modernity so that the Escapist charge against Morris could not stand.The second chapter concentrates on Morris’s Utopian narration and the socialist imagination embedded in it.Morris turned to fiction writing in spite of his established status as a poet in the late 1880s.At the time when News from Nowhere was published,the socialist movement was on the rise and a modern publishing market was being formed.Facing those cultural changes,Morris passionately involved himself in the New Romance trend in literary field,disseminating his socialist insights.It can not be denied that the direct cause of the writing of News from Nowhere is the popularity of Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward.A comparative reading with Looking Backward could find the exquisiteness of Morris’s craft of narration.News from Nowhere continues with Morris’s humanistic concern over Victorian modernity.However,averting the metaphorical way of poetic representation,Morris devises a future space in which the Utopian concepts are articulated straightforwardly.As far as Morris perceives,the revival of handicraft is the crucial strategy of resistance against Victorian modernity.In brief,Morris bestows handicraft the vitality against the Victorian crisis of modernity.Chapter Three expounds Morris’s socialist concepts retained in his essays,especially those in Socialism:Its Growth and Outcome coauthored with Ernest Belfort Bax.Under edification of the progressive thoughts sweeping in his age and materialist conception of history proposed by Marx and Engels,Socialism:Its Growth and Outcome evaluates the evolution of society optimistically in which Morris shows his belief in the unpreventable arrival of the Socialist society.Morris’s socialist concepts deriving from the diagnoses of social problems he named as“the famine of art”and alienated labour uphold equality,fulfillment and“commonwealth”.The famine of art with the exclusivity of art as its essence is an extension of social inequality in the art field,which functions together with luxury consumption aggravate the existing problems of class and labour.The direct consequence brings out by the famine of art and alienated labour criticized by Morris is the recession of aesthetics.To settle those problems,Morris advocates the pleasure of work as he believes that only through pleasurable work could art be created.Moreover,Morris justifies the artistic value of“the lesser arts”and argues that it is the lesser arts that connect everyday life and remains with the common people.It is also in the lesser arts that Morris’s concept of work and art are connected.Morris’s concept of work and art are logically interwined,expressing the ideal of Aesthetic Socialism in chorus.This dissertation ends with an elaboration on Morris’s views of Aesthetic Socialism in Chapter Four.Progressing from the reflection on modernity to the imagination of socialism,Morris always highlights aesthetics.Back in the Victorian context,it may be found that Morris’s resistant strategies and rebellious practices against modernity were unfortunately but inevitably neutralized by the dizzy nexus of modernity.This state of ambiguity is determined by the complexity of historical occurrences but also shows the dilemma aesthetics confronted when it works as an antidote for the crisis of modernity,for aesthetics itself is generated by modernity.Diverging from the aesthetic slogan of“art for art’s sake”,Morris’s aesthetic thoughts are theoretically inspired by Marx’s view of practice which justifies human’s sensuous activity.Morris’s views of Aesthetic Socialism thus features as“aesthetic practice of everyday life”.Through this original aesthetic concept,Morris hopes to remedy the wrongs of Victorian modernity and erase the mortifying inequality among classes he resented.Actually,Morris’s reflection on modernity inherited the philosophical legacy of empiricism and skepticism.The critical atmosphere the Victorian intellects created also inspired Morris.Much as an apparent resistance against modern civilization,Morris has no intention to drag history back to the Middle Ages.In this sense,Morris’s visions and practices will continue to inspire us.