인위성의 비판: 모리스의 『노웨어에서 온 소식』과 라파엘전파, 낭만주의

Abstract

This study of William Morris’s News from Nowhere perceives artificiality as the main target of his social criticism in the novel. Artificiality, according to him, permeates every area of Victorian society: gender relations, education system, motherhood, commerce, manufacture, and most significantly, artistic practices. Morris believes that the artificial nature of capitalist society (its drive for mass production, increasing mechanization, the alienation of labor) inhibits artistic creativity and freedom, making it impossible to produce truly beautiful things. This study traces Morris’s conception of Victorian artificiality back to the Pre-Raphaelites, who attacked artificial modes of painting and aspired to truthfully copy nature in their works on the advice of Ruskin, whom Morris deeply admired; and further back to the Romantic poets, who pursued the sincerity of literature in reaction to artificial (or unnatural) practices of language in their day. What can be called the Romantic spirit runs through the different phases of Pre-Raphaelite movement, and also through Morris’s remarkable achievements in decorative art and his News from Nowhere. Nowhere, twenty-first-century Britain, is a utopia where all traits associated with modern artificiality have been completely removed, an ideal community in which art/work brings genuine aesthetic pleasure. In this utopian vision, Morris successfully integrates the Romantic tradition and Pre-Raphaelitism into his own socialism.