SOURCE: “An Essay in Sexual Liberation, Victorian Style: Walter Pater's ‘Two Early French Stories’” in Literary Visions of Homosexuality, edited by Stuart Kellogg, The Haworth Press, 1983, pp. 139-50.

In the following essay, Dellamora contends that Pater's revision of the first chapter of The Renaissance attempts to reconcile Christianity and homoeroticism.

The following essay challenges a common view of the career of Walter Pater: that he criticized Victorian religious beliefs and social mores in his first book, Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873), then spent the rest of his life backing down.¹ Such a retreat appears to be evident in his decision to delete the notorious Conclusion from the second edition, now retitled The Renaissance (1877).² Nevertheless, I will argue that his decision was made in order to avoid entangling himself in further arguments with his critics at Oxford, critics who had already shown an ability to damage his...