ON FORM: POETRY, AESTHETICISM, AND THE LEGACY OF A WORD

"In this book Angela Leighton examines the legacy of the word 'form' from Victorian aestheticism to the present. She shows how writers, for two centuries and more, have returned to the idea of form as something which, however familiar and well-worn, seems to contain the secret of art itself. She casts fresh light on familiar debates about form and content, while exploring the sense of form as muscle or sound-shape, as both sensual body and ghostly dynamic of the text. She argues, moreover, that form remains deeply implicated in the aestheticist principle of artistic inutility, and that this being 'for nothing' remains art's most potent and moving purpose."--BOOK JACKET.