Abstract: For over a hundred years, nineteenth-century Aestheticism's dissemination in China has been insufficiently examined, which leaves the intension and extension of Aestheticism still unclarified even to date. The key to defining Aestheticism is the concept's inherent link to aesthetics, that is, the self-awareness of sensibility, which explains why numerous forms of perceptual knowledge can be intuitively grasped from the works of Western Aestheticism. However, under the influence of natural sciences as well as the industrial and commercial civilization, the target of perceptual knowledge shifted from natural to artificial objects. Through manifesting the diverse forms of perceptual knowledge, Aestheticism conveys the artists' personalized "sentiment." Therefore, it can be said that nineteenth-century Aestheticism derives from certain artists' self-conscious attempts, during the transformation of modernization, to explore and express the possibilities of perceptual knowledge out of their paradoxical mentality of being shocked by and curious about the industrial and urban civilizations. Specifically, nineteenth-century Aestheticism can be understood on four levels: Aesthetic poetics, Aesthetic schools of art, Aesthetic works of art, and the Arts and Crafts Movement.

Key words: Aestheticism, trend of thought in literature and art, perceptual knowledge, decadence, aesthetics