ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -This short statement of Oscar Wilde in his Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) expresses one of the central aspects of the idea of Art for Art’s Sake: art shall have no other aim than being art and it should be protected from subordination to any moral, didactic, social or political purpose.

Detailed explanation-2: -The Beginnings. In an 1804 journal post, Swiss writer Benjamin Constant is considered to have been the first to use the term “art for art’s sake, ” However, Victor Cousin, a French philosopher, is credited with popularising the phrase in his 1817-18 lectures.

Detailed explanation-3: -English Aesthetic Movement The slogan “art for art’s sake” is associated in the history of English art and letters with the Oxford don Walter Pater and his followers in the Aesthetic Movement, which was self-consciously in rebellion against Victorian moralism.