Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“taste is free, and all styles are good which amuse;”
- Date
- 1904
- Local voice
- Authorial / signed preface voice · Henry Adams (guide-narrator)
Meaning of “taste is free, and all styles are good…”
Adams allows room for personal aesthetic preference even while asking readers to understand the very different energy and values expressed by medieval architecture.
Where does it come from?
Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres, Chapter I, Project Gutenberg #4584. Adams’s playful guide-narrator says that “taste is free, and all styles are good which amuse” while comparing Norman seriousness with later French architectural taste before asking the reader to understand the energy expressed by Norman art. It is rhetorical aesthetic commentary rather than a complete or empirical theory of artistic value.
Why the local voice matters
Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres, Chapter I. Adams addresses the reader in the book’s playful tour-guide voice while comparing architectural tastes.