History as Palingenesis in Pater and Hegel

Abstract

Like Hegel, Pater often uses images of death and rebirth to describe the historical process. This imagery reflects Hegel's principle that later stages of artistic and spiritual development annul earlier phases and yet also conserve them. The series of rebirth images by which Pater describes the process of historical development is the firmest proof that Hegelés thought was a sustained and creative influence on his work. In the strongly Hegelian Winckelmann essay, Pater represents the Renaissance as a cultural affirmation achieved through negation, while others of the Studies in the Renaissance define the idea of cultural rebirth through the images of metempsychosis and the afterlife of the pagan gods. The original version of the Winckelmann essay also mentions Hegel in connection with the myth of Demeter, which, in his essays on Demeter and Persephone, Pater treats as still another image of cultural continuity. The principal source for these studies was Ludwig Preller's Demeter und Persephone. Pater also borrowed Preller's theory of a primitive religion of the earth, connected it with the Christian imagery of death and rebirth, and employed it again in Marius the Epicurean, his most ambitious treatment of the historical dialectic.

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