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1 results

  • Chapter 1 - Stylistic Virtue and the Rise of Literary Formalism

  • Matthew Sussman, University of Sydney
  • Book:
    Stylistic Virtue and Victorian Fiction
    Published online:
    11 June 2021
    Print publication:
    01 July 2021, pp 26-46

  • Summary

    The first chapter argues that stylistic virtue was an important concept in British aesthetics that significantly influenced the development of formalism. It begins by examining the prevalence of stylistic virtues in eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century rhetoric, where they were shaped by two approaches that mirror those described in the introduction: a psychological one that viewed style as extrinsic to textual content, and a belletristic one that emphasized the stylistic construction of aesthetic “character.” As the division between rhetoric and literary criticism began to harden, a new generation of Victorian critics co-opted the belletristic approach, placing the analysis of style at the heart of the emerging discipline of “English.” While some scholars have argued that Victorian readers were insensitive to style, this chapter reveals that wide-ranging figures such as Thomas De Quincey, Alexander Bain, David Masson, and Herbert Spencer each centered the aesthetic distinctiveness of literature around small-scale stylistic properties.