Just as his previous novel, The Folding Star, established the presence of the symbolist fin de siècle in the life of an aesthetically inclined gay man in the late twentieth century, The Line of Beauty revives the discourses of Aestheticism as shadowy contemporary presences. To email * Your name * Your email * Comment Please tick the box below *Ĭhapter 8. Inoperative Ironies Jamesian Aestheticism and Postmodern Culture in Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty ExtractĪlan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty is set in 1980s Britain, but its vision of the aristocracy, consumerism and the emerging culture of postmodernism is continuously informed by a deep involvement in nineteenth-century Aestheticism. Most significantly, all of these contexts are mediated through the continual presence of Henry James, who. The historical line of beauty is traced by a double curve – from the aristocratic houses of the 1980s Conservatives to the Victorian fin de siècle, where Beardsley’s aesthetic of shadowy surfaces moves through the excesses of Wagnerism, curving back to the equally flirtatious surfaces of 1980s design culture and the new hedonism of Thatcher’s Britain. Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty is set in 1980s Britain, but its vision of the aristocracy, consumerism and the emerging culture of postmodernism is continuously informed by a deep involvement in nineteenth-century Aestheticism.

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