By A.M.
The Pre-Raphaelite movement in the Victorian era, despite its immense popularity, was not without its detractors. One of the harshest critics of the Pre-Raphaelites was Robert Williams Buchanan; in his 1871 review of a book of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s poetry, Buchanan coined a derogatory term for the Pre-Raphaelites: The Fleshly School of Poetry (Buchanan 334). This term is an obvious reference to the sexual nature of the Pre-Raphaelite body of work. The fleshly school would become a well-known moniker for the Pre-Raphaelites, and this is evident from the use of this insult in a Punch article, a fake interview with Oscar Wilde, about Aestheticism that was written over a decade later: “Several Ladies expressed their disappointment at the ‘insufficient leanness’ of the Poet’s figure, whereupon his Business Manager explained that he belonged to the fleshly school” (Punch 58). The fact that this term for the Pre-Raphaelites was popular enough to be used as a throwaway pun in a widely read publication like Punch a decade later proves that the fleshly school was not contained to just the Buchanan piece. Furthermore, the centerpiece of the Punch article is a parody of Ariadne being abandoned at Naxos (she was abandoned by Theseus so Dionysus could marry her, and the implication here is that Wilde is leaving English Aestheticism to be picked up by another artist while he attempts Continue reading