Vernon Lees Theorie der ästhetischen Erfahrung: Grenzgänge der Empathie

Abstract The enormously prolific and diverse writer Vernon Lee (Violet Paget) has recently been rediscovered in English literary and cultural studies. However, her elision from art history remains to be corrected. This article reconsiders Lee’s theory of the beautiful which she referred to as »psychological aestheticism«. In the light of recent developments in aesthetic theory Lee’s ideas unfold considerable potential: their utilization of a concept of empathy inherent in subjective responses to art ties in with a current shift towards processual and performative evaluations of art rather than static and normative ones. Lee came very close to today’s understanding of visual art by locating symbolic meaning in subjective experience and thus opening up an entire range of spatial, psychological, emotional and communicative aspects of spectatorship pertinent to analysis. These aspects she developed in a more playful manner in her literary works. My article reads the ekphrastic encounter in one of Lee’s fantastic stories from her collection Hauntings as a negotiation of Lee’s aesthetic theory, concluding that her advanced ideas deconstructed an idealistic and implicitly hierarchical understanding of art.