Undercurrents Running Beneath Tranquility

Renowned as “The Saint of Victorian England”, John Ruskin has been considered as an outstanding art critic, writer as well as an essayist. Both the domestic and foreign studies mainly evolve around the architectural, aesthetic and cultural aspects of the book, nevertheless, a cultural interpretation based on its unique traits of literariness tends to be insufficient. In fact, Ruskin adroitly intertwined social and cultural criticism into its elegant prose-writing, which features with two dominant metaphorical mechanisms of "Lamps" and "Gothic Architecture". Hence, With the application of Williamsian theories of "Cultural Materialism" and "Structure of Feelings",a textual study of The Seven Lamps of Architecture purports to be realized from the religious, artistic, as well as cultural perspectives. At last, it comes to the conclusion that on the one hand, the book tends to be regarded as a hidden criticism of the Chartist movement; on the other hand, it succeeded in rendering a mild social modification blueprint through parodying and metaphorical systems. The significance of the study lies in that beneath the superficial "tranquility" of architectural illustrations, undercurrents of Ruskin’s "wretched rant " and subtle sermonizing preaching abounds in the book in a unwitting manner.The thesis consists of three parts: to begin with, the introductory part deals with the literature achievements of the readers as well as the completed studies on this book. In the first chapter, it dwells on the expression of elite culture through a parody of Genesis, which tends to be aimed rendering a conservative reformative blueprint for the working class people in the Chartist Movement; in the second chapter, it analyzes the connotations of ‘mass culture’ through unraveling its architectural metaphorical system; in the last chapter, it will analyze the reception of conservative culture against the social backdrop of “modernity” so as to render a tentative Williamsian antidote.