The Two Paths

Being Lectures on Art and Its Application to Decoration and Manufacture Delivered in 1858-9

John Ruskin
Edited by Christine Roth

Prospects in Visual Rhetoric
Edited by Marguerite Helmers

Information and Pricing
1-932559-18-3 (paperback; $21.00); © 2004 by Parlor Press. 188 pages, with introduction, notes, and bibliographical references

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ISBN 1-932559-19-1 (hardcover; $46.00); 1-932559-20-5 (Adobe ebook; $12.00)

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Description

In The Two Paths, Ruskin connects his theories of art with economic and practical life. The central theme of Ruskin’s theories of art was that contented individuals—working within a just society and striving to capture the essence of nature—produce fine and noble art, while corrupt and despondent individuals—working within an unjust society and relying on the tools of the machine age—produce inferior art. Ruskin's essays anticipate and complement theoretical approaches by critics such as Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, and Max Horkheimer.

Offering a reconsideration of the rhetorical tradition from a visual perspective, this Prospects in Visual Rhetoric Critical Edition is the only edition of The Two Paths currently in print. The introductions and annotations were designed to facilitate critical discussions of Ruskin's theories of art, his role as a social reformer, his visual rhetoric, and the historical/political contexts of his work. The editor's notes define names and cultural allusions in the text, which also includes all appendices and Ruskin’s own introduction and illustrations.

About the Author

John Ruskin (1819-1900), best known for his studies of design and its social and historical implications, is perhaps the greatest critic of culture and art in English history. Between March 1857 and March 1860, Ruskin delivered seventeen addresses that connect his theories of art with economic and practical life. These addresses fall into two classes: lectures called “The Political Economy of Art” (afterwards published as A Joy for Ever), which really began his writing on social and political economy; and miscellaneous lectures afterwards published in The Two Paths, which summarize, and in some points develop, the art theory contained in the five volumes of Modern Painters and the architectural books like The Stones of Venice. In The Two Paths, Ruskin connects his theories of art with economic and practical life. The central theme of Ruskin’s theories of art was that contented individuals, working within a just society and striving to capture the essence of nature, produce fine and noble art, while corrupt and despondent individuals working within an unjust society, and relying on the tools of the machine age, produce inferior art.

About the Editor

Christine Roth is assistant professor of English at the University of Wisconsin – Oshkosh, where she teaches and writes about nineteenth-century British literature and the Pre-Raphaelite movement.

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