What is form? Why does form matter? In this imaginative and ambitious study, Angela Leighton assesses not only the legacy of Victorian aestheticism, and its richly resourceful keyword, 'form', but also the very nature of the literary. She shows how writers, for two centuries and more, have returned to the idea of form as something which contains the secret of art itself. She tracks the development of the word from the Romantics to contemporary poets, and offers close readings of, among others, Tennyson, Pater, Woolf, Yeats, Stevens, and Plath, to show how form has provided the single most important way of accounting for the movements of literary language itself. She investigates, for instance, the old debate of form and content, of form as music or sound-shape, as the ghostly dynamic and dynamics of a text, as well as its long association with the aestheticist principle of being 'for nothing'. In a wide-ranging and inventive argument, she suggests that form is the key to the pleasure of the literary text, and that that pleasure is part of what literary criticism itself needs to answer and convey.

On Form: Poetry, Aestheticism, and the Legacy of a Word

Literature & Fiction

Leighton, Angela

British & Irish

Oxford University Press

What is form? Why does form matter? In this imaginative and ambitious study, Angela Leighton assesses not only the legacy of Victorian aestheticism, and its richly resourceful keyword, 'form' but also the very nature of the literary. She shows how writers, for two centuries and more, have returned to the idea of form as something which contains the secret of art itself. She tracks the development of the word from the Romantics to contemporary poets, and offers close readings of, among others, Tennyson, Pater, Woolf, Yeats, Stevens, and Plath, to show how form has provided the single most important way of accounting for the movements of literary language itself. She investigates, for instance, the old debate of form and content, of form as music or sound-shape, as the ghostly dynamic and dynamics of a text, as well as its long association with the aestheticist principle of being 'for nothing' In a wide-ranging and inventive argument, she suggests that form is the key to the pleasure of the literary text, and that that pleasure is part of what literary criticism itself needs to answer and convey.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Key Women Writers Series)

Indiana Univ. Pr

This book presents a major reassessment of Shelley's poetry. Whereas other criticism has stressed the philosophical and political concerns of his poetry in isolation, Angela Leighton argues that Shelley's philosophy and politics are presented as problems of poetic utterance and are this inseparable from his aesthetics. The author begins by tracing the origins of Shelley's poetic theory in eighteenth-century ideas of the sublime. She then discusses the effect of such a theory on the language of seven of Shelley's most important poems including 'Hymn to Intellectual Beauty', Prometheus Unbound, 'Ode to the West Wind', 'To a Skylark' and Adonais. In these poems the task of political change is expressed as the prerogative of the inspired poet, who desires to reunite the fallen language of poetry with the original impulse of inspiration that it supplants. This significant contribution to Shelley studies will interest all serious students of English Romantic poetry and aesthetics.

Shelley and the Sublime: An Interpretation of the Major Poems

Cambridge University Press

This book presents a major reassessment of Shelley's poetry. Whereas other criticism has stressed the philosophical and political concerns of his poetry in isolation, Angela Leighton argues that Shelley's philosophy and politics are presented as problems of poetic utterance and are this inseparable from his aesthetics. The author begins by tracing the origins of Shelley's poetic theory in eighteenth-century ideas of the sublime. She then discusses the effect of such a theory on the language of seven of Shelley's most important poems including 'Hymn to Intellectual Beauty', Prometheus Unbound, 'Ode to the West Wind', 'To a Skylark' and Adonais. In these poems the task of political change is expressed as the prerogative of the inspired poet, who desires to reunite the fallen language of poetry with the original impulse of inspiration that it supplants. This significant contribution to Shelley studies will interest all serious students of English Romantic poetry and aesthetics.

Hearing Things is a meditation on sound’s work in literature. Drawing on critical works and the commentaries of many poets and novelists who have paid close attention to the role of the ear in writing and reading, Angela Leighton offers a reconsideration of literature itself as an exercise in hearing.
An established critic and poet, Leighton explains how we listen to the printed word, while showing how writers use the expressivity of sound on the silent page. Although her focus is largely on poets―Alfred Tennyson, W. B. Yeats, Robert Frost, Walter de la Mare, Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop, Jorie Graham, and Alice Oswald―Leighton’s scope includes novels, letters, and philosophical writings as well. Her argument is grounded in the specificity of the text under discussion, but one important message emerges from the whole: literature by its very nature commands listening, and listening is a form of understanding that has often been overlooked. Hearing Things offers a renewed call for the kind of criticism that, avoiding the programmatic or purely ideological, remains alert to the work of sound in every literary text.

Hearing Things: The Work of Sound in Literature

History & Criticism

Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Harvester Press

This acclaimed book recovers and explores an important tradition of 19th-century women's poetry - from Felicia Hemans to Charlotte Mew. Angela Leighton not only discussed the work o many neglected poets (including Augusta Webster and `Michael Field'), she also charts the development of women's poetry form the sentimentalism of Hemans and L.E.L. (Letitia Elizabeth Landon)) to the various strategies of self-displacement employed by the best of the Victorians, especially Elizabeth Browning and Christina Rossetti. The work combines biographical material with theoretical readings of the poems, and offers new reinterpretations of some original and intriguing literature. Much of this had been by passed or forgotten before Angela Leighton's work.â It is impressive in scope, is highly original in its aims, and is established as the chief critical work in its field.

Victorian Women Poets: Writing Against the Heart

PRENTICE/HALL

Victorian Women Poets: Writing Against the Heart (Victorian Literature and Culture Series)

Univ of Virginia Pr

This book recovers and explores an important tradition of nineteenth-century women's poetry from Felicia Hemans to Charlotte Mew. Angela Leighton not only discusses the work of neglected poets such as Augusta Webster and "Michael Field," but also charts the development of women's poetry from sentimentalism of Hemans and L.E.L. (Letitia Elizabeth Landon) to the various strategies of self-displacement employed by the best of the Victorians, especially Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti.
Combining biographical material with theoretical readings of the poems, Angela Leighton offers a reinterpretation not only of some original and intriguing literature, but also of the very canon of Victorian poetry. Impressive in scope and highly original in its aims, this study will serve as the main critical work in this area for many years to come.

University of Virginia Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Leighton, Angela. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Leighton, Angela

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Leighton, Angela. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

On Form: Poetry, Aestheticism, and the Legacy of a Word

On Form: Poetry, Aestheticism, and the Legacy of a Word

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Key Women Writers Series)

Shelley and the Sublime: An Interpretation of the Major Poems

Shelley and the Sublime: An Interpretation of the Major Poems

Hearing Things: The Work of Sound in Literature

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Victorian Women Poets: Writing Against the Heart

Victorian Women Poets: Writing Against the Heart (Victorian Literature and Culture Series)

Victorian Women Poets: Writing Against the Heart (Victorian Literature and Culture Series)