Collecting and appreciating [electronic resource] : Henry James and the transformation of aesthetics in the age of consumption / Simone Francescato.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [195]-205) and index.

Appreciation in the age of consumption. The rise of consumption as an aesthetic revolution; Collecting as a modern form of art appreciation; The problem of art consumption for John Ruskin -- Henry James's early response to collecting. Henry James and the Ruskinian picturesque; Picturesque relics vs. renovated collectibles -- Between aestheticism and naturalism. The aesthete and the naturalist as cultural commodifiers; The impossible painting and the ugly statuettes -- The princess Casamassima. Unmasking the naturalist collector: Zola, Turgenev and James; A youth upon whom nothing was lost; The last sacrifice; The extending of one's horizon -- Henry James's aesthetics of desire. Georg Simmel's "value-increasing process"; The ambiguities of a fin-de-siecle connoisseur: Bernard Berenson; The most exquisite economy: Henry James's aesthetics of desire; Appreciation and interpretation -- The spoils of Poynton. The buried bone and the tiny nuggets; A hindrance in the quality of the material; The method at the heart of madness -- The golden bowl. Rounding off the corners of life; Small shining diamonds out of the sweepings of an ordered house; The steel hoop and the silken rope.

Electronic reproduction. Palo Alto, Calif. : ebrary, 2011. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ebrary affiliated libraries.