E X T E N S I O N THE AESTHETIC MOVEMENT In the last part of the nineteenth century a new movement was born in Paris; its name was Aestheticism and its main exponent was the French poet, novelist and critic, Théofile Gautier (1811-1872). It considered Art with its cult1 of beauty as the supreme value. Its motto was Art for art s sake, according to which there s no connection between art and morality, that is, a work of art should have no moral purpose, it should be beautiful, not necessarily moral. An artist had to be free to express himself without following rules or conventions. The word Aestheticism comes from a Greek word which means to feel . The artist considers sensations extremely important. As a consequence, the followers of this movement also led a hedonistic2 life for which the principal good of man is pleasure. In particular life has to be lived as a work of art and beauty becomes central. In the second Chapter Lord Henry s original words, as regards the central role of beauty in life, are: Beauty is a form of Genius, as it needs no explanation. It is one of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or spring-time, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell3 we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. In Great Britain this movement became important in the 1890 s. Walter Pater (1839-1894) was its theorist and his ideas, as expressed in his Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873), greatly influenced Oscar Wilde who had been one of his students at Oxford.The Aesthetic Movement was considered as a reaction against Victorian hypocritical morality. For Wilde the artist was an alien4 in a materialistic world. Walter Pater 1. cult: estreme admiration. 2. hedonistic: devoted to pleasure. 3. silver shell: the hard outer part that protects the body of a sea creature whose colour is a light metal grey. 4. alien: from another planet. 37