Bloomsbury and the Revolution in Aesthetics

Piero V. Mini
Additional contact information
Piero V. Mini: Bryant College

Chapter 5 in Keynes, Bloomsbury and The General Theory, 1991, pp 84-103 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Given the importance of the bonds of community and friendship it would have been strange if graduation from Cambridge had caused the Apostles to lose touch with each other. In fact, Moore’s ‘highest good’ proved strong enough to withstand the requirements of making a living. As is well known, most of the Apostles of Keynes’s generation settled in London in close proximity to each other, and from the original ‘at homes’ of some of them a new association eventually sprang up, looser than the Society, but one that, in time, would be a very important force in the cultural life of Britain. Perhaps because the influence of Bloomsbury — in view of some — was not totally wholesome, there has been an unnecessary effort, even on the part of some Bloomsberries, to deny its very existence. Thus Clive Bell asks, ‘Who are the members of Bloomsbury? For what do they stand?’ Both questions are easy to answer. The core of Bloomsbury comprised Roger Fry, the Stephen sisters — Vanessa and Virginia — their husbands, Clive Bell and Leonard Woolf, Duncan Grant, Lytton Strachey and Keynes. And they stood quite simply for changing the cultural values of the nation away from utilitarianism and towards Moorean ultimates. They were in the anti-Benthamite tradition of those writers who viewed themselves as having a mission to teach higher values to the masses, and especially to prevent their being swallowed up by the crassness of a commercial civilisation.

Keywords: Conscious Mind; Leisured Class; Great Public; Unconscious Mind; True Civilisation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1991
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-349-11651-5_5

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9781349116515

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-11651-5_5

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().