© 2004 by Oxford University Press
Ruskin's Aesthetic of Failure in The Stones of Venice
Criticism has not sufficiently acknowledged the significance of Ruskin's anxieties about authorship and influence in the composition of The Stones of Venice (1851–3). This article argues that he became increasingly dispirited about his role as a critic during his work in Venice on The Stones in the early 1850s because of parental criticism, poor reviews, the fragility of Venice herself, and the implications of the death of Turner. Fearful that his words were failing to gain the critical purchase he desired, he felt increasingly distant from Carlyle's model of heroic literary manliness that had been announced in 1840. Ruskin's growing anxieties had a determining effect on central features of The Stones and gave shape, in particular, to his meditations in volume ii on the Palazzo Ducale as a building of conspicuous influence, and to his formulation of the Gothic as an architecture that celebrated failure. The energy of his most famous statement about the moral identity of architecture thus derived partly from its imaginative negotiation with a personal predicament.
* The epigraph comes from Ruskin's description in The Stones of Venice of the principle of Christianity that most connected with the spirit of the Gothic. See The Complete Works of John Ruskin, ed. E. T. Cook and A. Wedderburn, 39 vols. (London, 1903–12), x. 190. References to this edition below in the main text are to volume and page number. For helpful discussions during the writing of this article, thanks to Professor Dinah Birch, Dr James S. Dearden, Mrs Rebecca Patterson, Mr Stephen Wildman, and Ms Jane Wright. This article was completed in 2000.