Neo-Victorian Romanticism and Decadence: The Reconceptualization of Realism from John Henry Newman to James Stephens

This article explores the late nineteenth-century resurgence of Romantic aesthetics as a neo- Victorian phenomenon.1 To do so, it tackles realism as the dominant formal and conceptual register of the Victorian age, investigating the reconceptualization of social realism put forth by decadent artists such as Oscar Wilde and Walter Pater and by Irish modernist writer James Stephens (1880-1950).2 Such a reconceptualization is assessed as a reworking of theoretical principles set forth during the Victorian Age by John Henry Newman. An overview of such tenets, based mainly on Romantic premises such as idealism and immaterialism, is provided to bring into focus the reception of Newman’s ‘aesthetic idealism’ during decadence and High Modernism.