Title: Veneration and Dominion: On John Ruskin’s Humanistic Poetical Vision

Abstract: The inextricable intertextuality of John Ruskin’s pictorial writings and symbol systems led to the enhancement of the untranslatability of Ruskinian prose texts. Nevertheless, penetrating through feminine sublimity, there still exists abundant spaces for the re-examination of humanistic heritages of Ruskin’s prose texts featuring with powerful poetic tension. This paper, initiating from the dual dimensions of veneration and dominion, purports to conduct a close textual reading of his three representative architectural prose works, The Poetry of Architecture, The Seven Lamps of Architecture and The Stones of Venice, to further explore the interactive generation of the textual symbolic systems of his architectural writings. Thus, Ruskin’s heterogeneous architectural vision can be regarded as a writing strategy and a tool of struggle to challenge the legitimacy of binary oppositions, thereby reconstructing a kind of fluidity and openness of diverse cultures.

Keywords: John Ruskin, architectural writings, humanism, poetical vision, veneration, dominion

Author: Chengzhen Cai, Lecturer, College of European and American Studies, Guangxi University of Foreign Studies, Nanning, Guangxi, China.