Description
Book SynopsisReflecting varieties of theory and practice in both verse and prose from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century, these essays by many of America's literary scholars call for a reinvigorated formalism that can enrich literary studies, open productive routes of commerce with cultural studies, and propel cultural theory out of its thematic ruts.
Trade Review"An extraordinarily wide-ranging collection, spanning texts and issues from the Middle Ages to contemporary theory. Formalism, it becomes clear, is not something that literary studies have ever superseded but rather an abiding preoccupation that both literature and its critics have continually endorsed and assimilated in a surprising array of registers and concerns. The contributors are all leaders in their respective fields and their collective effort will be required reading for students of literature at all levels."--William Galperin, Rutgers University
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Reading for Form / Susan J. Wolfson
Form and Contentment / Ellen Rooney
Hating and Loving Aesthetic Formalism: Some Reasons / Virgil Nemoianu
Medieval Forma: The Logic of the Work / D. Vance Smith
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? Reinterpreting Formalism and the Country House Poem / Heather Dubrow
"Among Unequals What Society": Paradise Lost and the Forms of Intimacy / Ronald Levao
Formalism and History: Binarism and the Anglophone Couplet / J. Paul Hunter
The Signature and the Initial in Zukofsky's "A" / Susan Stewart
"Sound Scraps, Vision Scraps": Paul Celan's Poetic Practice / Marjorie Perloff
Everybody Hates Kant: Blakean Formalism and the Symmetries of Laura Moriarty / Robert Kaufman
Jane Austen, Emma, and the Impact of Form / Frances Ferguson
The Foreign Offices of British Fiction / Garrett Stewart
The Slaughterhouse of Literature / Franco Moretti
Formalism and Time / Catherine Gallagher
Contributors
Index
