ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the evolution of form (as an aesthetic category) and formalism (a methodology) as these concepts develop in and after the Victorian period. Examining specific areas of focus—including the role of sight, scientific objectivity, and emotional and bodily feeling—it highlights aspects of Victorian aesthetic criticism that influenced the twentieth-century development of formalist methods that continue to shape the field of literary studies today. Bringing what had been primarily understood as philosophical problems into more scientific domains, Victorian aesthetic thought worked to legitimize and modernize an art criticism equipped to analyze new and often devalued objects of study, like the novel. Finally, this chapter shows how some new developments in Victorian studies treat form not as fixed and permanent, containing specific features or requiring systematic rules of analysis, but instead as a dynamic and historical category. Likewise formalism is shown to be an active force that makes visible aspects of literary form and aesthetic experience that might otherwise remain invisible to us.
