Reflecting 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 leading 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.
This book reprints Modern Language Quarterly’s highly acclaimed special issue Reading for Form, along with new essays by Marjorie Perloff, D. Vance Smith, and Susan Stewart, and a revised introduction by Susan Wolfson. With historical case studies and insightful explorations, Reading for Form offers invaluable material for literary critics in all specializations.
Table of Content
Introduction: 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
About the author
Susan J. Wolfson is professor of English at Princeton University. Marshall Brown is professor of comparative literature at the University of Washington and editor of Modern Language Quarterly.More ebooks from the same author(s) / Editor
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