As Sebastian continues the country house tour, Charles is introduced to the deconsecrated chapel a religious site which has been reupholstered for Aestheticism: ‘The whole interior had been gutted, elaborately refurnished and redecorated in the arts-and-crafts style of the last decade of the nineteenth century’. For Charles, revealed beauty is all the more acute for its obliquity and absence of content. Walking down a dark corridor, Sebastian Flyte unbars the shutters of an unused window, and light streams into an exquisitely decorated but empty room.

To email * Your name * Your email * Comment Please tick the box below *Ĭhapter 6. Aristocracies of Mourning The Reconsecration of Aestheticism in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited Extractĭuring Charles Ryder’s first visit to Lord and Lady Marchmain’s country estate in Brideshead Revisited, he is introduced to a new world of aesthetic possibilities in what are at first only tentative glimpses. In a novel of aesthetic education which attempts to orchestrate a translation of artistic to religious passion, the symbolic content of the abandoned chapel is as overstated as its gaudy altar triptych.

During Charles Ryder’s first visit to Lord and Lady Marchmain’s country estate in Brideshead Revisited, he is introduced to a new world of aesthetic possibilities in what are at first only tentative glimpses.

Brideshead revisited chapters