Ön-Raffaellocular'ın görsel ve yazınsal anlatılarında kadın tasvirleri

Nineteenth century England going through a process of social transformation under the reign of Queen Victoria witnessed a countercultural art movement, namely Pre-Raphaelitism, which brought together rebellion, beauty, subtlety, creative splendour in the pot of symbolic reality. The term Pre-Raphaelite originated in relation to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (1848), a group of rebellious young painters, poet, and critic formed with the aim of creating a new British school of art by defying all conventions of art, mainly instructed by the British Royal Academy. Foregrounding the interconnections between literature and painting, which all resulted in images rife with photographic realism, their doctrine advocated the uncomplicated and faithful depiction of everything and every figure, typical of Italian painting, for, as their self-given title states, they felt that art had declined with the mid-renaissance painter Raphael, so they gave value to all that preceded him. With the belief of reform in art, they championed the ideology of seeking the real, not the ideal, as a subject matter for their paintings and reflecting it on their canvasses. This reality encompasses not only material but also spiritual purposes; thus, they lay claim to the moral authority of the epoch. Besides, at the same time, they believed that the first step to discovering the pure state of reality was observing nature. With these rigorous observational studies, the Pre-Raphaelites were not only enlightened about the source nature offered them, but they also had an idea about human nature, notably woman. In this sense, aiming to promote resurgence and rejuvenation of simplicity in Pre-Raphael art and medieval mysticism, female figure, for their canvas, became requisite. When women, the important concept of the nineteenth century, is taken into consideration, the Pre-Raphaelites' approach was different from that of their period. Committed to picturing likeness of real women on the grounds of different approach and treatment, the Pre-Raphaelite artists departed from the entrenched notion of ideal woman, prevalent in Victorian art. From this standpoint, this present inter-disciplinary study aims to analyse images of woman not only depicted in literature from which the Pre-Raphaelites drew inspiration but also created by them for their visual and textual narratives on the basis of their own definition and traditional Victorian stereotypes within the framework of feminist readings in order to find out a) what impact did Victorian ideas/stereotypes of women have on the Pre-Raphaelites' treatment of the female subject; b) did they herald the birth of a modern woman or actually perpetuate gender norms?