Fateful Beauty: Aesthetic Environments, Juvenile Development, and Literature 1860-1960

by Douglas Mao

Book Overview

When Oscar Wilde said he had "seen wallpaper which must lead a boy brought up under its influence to a life of crime," his joke played on an idea that has often been taken quite seriously--both in Wilde's day and in our own. In Fateful Beauty , Douglas Mao recovers the lost intellectual, social, and literary history of the belief that the beauty--or ugliness--of the environment in which one is raised influences or even determines one's fate. Weaving...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0691133484
• ISBN13: 9780691133485
• Release Date: April 2008
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Length: 319 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.1" x 9.2"