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Being Lectures on Art and Its Application to Decoration and Manufacture
Delivered in 1858-9
John Ruskin
Edited by Christine Roth
A Prospects in Visual Rhetoric Critical Edition
Includes introduction, notes, and bibliographical references
© 2004 by Parlor Press. 188 pages
ISBN 1-932559-18-3 (Paper)
ISBN 1-932559-19-1 (Casebound)
ISBN 1-932559-20-5 (Adobe eBook)
View a larger image of the cover.
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.
Series Description
Prospects in Visual Rhetoric
Series Editor, Marguerite Helmers
 The Series is intended to be a series of historical statements on visual
culture, art, architecture, costume, and design, republished for the
benefit of the modern reader with commentary by contemporary scholars.
Prospects in Visual Rhetoric emerges in the scholarly publishing world
to offer an opportunity for a new tradition to be forged, not so much
to build a canon, but to rewrite rhetorical tradition from a visual perspective.
It is our hope that looking backwards at significant writers and noteworthy
essays will allow scholars in the emerging field of visual rhetoric to
trace their history to the visual theories, critical commentaries, and
scholarly studies of the past. Rhetoricians interested in the visual
turn of present-day scholarship will be able to extend their inquiry
into the styles, genres, and forms of aesthetic discourse of previous
decades and centuries. We hope that art historians, designers, and critics
of the visual will also benefit from reconceptualizing these key statements.
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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