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What do we mean when we say that a novel's conclusion "feels right"? How did feeling, form, and the sense of right and wrong get mixed up, during the nineteenth century, in the experience of reading a novel? Good Form argues that Victorian readers associated the feeling of narrative form-of being pulled forward to a satisfying conclusion-with inner moral experience. Reclaiming the work of a generation of Victorian "intuitionist" philosophers who insisted that true morality consisted in being able to feel or intuit the morally good, Jesse Rosenthal shows that when Victorians discussed the moral dimensions of reading novels, they were also subtly discussing the genre's formal properties.For most, Victorian moralizing is one of the period's least attractive and interesting qualities. But Good Form argues that the moral interpretation of novel experience was essential in the development of the novel form-and that this moral approach is still a fundamental, if unrecognized, part of how we understand novels. Bringing together ideas from philosophy, literary history, and narrative theory, Rosenthal shows that we cannot understand the formal principles of the novel that we have inherited from the nineteenth century without also understanding the moral principles that have come with them. Good Form helps us to understand the way Victorians read, but it also helps us to understand the way we read now.

Ethics in literature. --- English fiction --- History and criticism. --- 1800-1899 --- Analogy. --- Anecdote. --- Autobiography. --- Backstory. --- Bildungsroman. --- Cambridge University Press. --- Character (arts). --- Charles Dickens. --- Conscience. --- Consciousness. --- Crime fiction. --- Criticism. --- Critique of Pure Reason. --- D. A. Miller. --- Daniel Deronda. --- Deus ex machina. --- E. M. Forster. --- Edward Bulwer-Lytton. --- Elizabeth Gaskell. --- Epic poetry. --- Ethics. --- Eugene Aram. --- Explanation. --- Fiction. --- Franco Moretti. --- Fredric Jameson. --- Genre fiction. --- Genre. --- George Eliot. --- George Meredith. --- Good and evil. --- Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. --- Gwendolen Harleth. --- Gwendolen. --- Halpern. --- Historical fiction. --- Humour. --- I Wish (manhwa). --- Ian Watt. --- Illustration. --- Intuitionism. --- Jack Sheppard. --- James Clerk Maxwell. --- John Stuart Mill. --- Johns Hopkins. --- Jonathan Wild. --- Laughter. --- Lecture. --- Leopold Zunz. --- Literary criticism. --- Literary realism. --- Literature. --- Mary Barton. --- Meditations. --- Middlemarch. --- Misery (novel). --- Morality. --- Narration. --- Narrative structure. --- Narrative. --- Newgate novel. --- Novel. --- Novelist. --- Oxford University Press. --- Parody. --- Paul Clifford. --- Phenomenon. --- Philosopher. --- Philosophy. --- Poetry. --- Political philosophy. --- Practical reason. --- Probability. --- Prose. --- Publication. --- Quantity. --- Reason. --- Ridicule. --- Roland Barthes. --- Rookwood (novel). --- Sensation novel. --- Steven Marcus. --- Subplot. --- Suggestion. --- Teleology. --- The Intuitionist. --- The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. --- The Marriage Plot. --- The Other Hand. --- The Pickwick Papers. --- Theft. --- Theory. --- Thought. --- Usage. --- Utilitarianism. --- Victorian literature. --- William Harrison Ainsworth. --- William Whewell. --- Writer. --- Writing.

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
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What do we mean when we say that a novel's conclusion "feels right"? How did feeling, form, and the sense of right and wrong get mixed up, during the nineteenth century, in the experience of reading a novel? Good Form argues that Victorian readers associated the feeling of narrative form--of being pulled forward to a satisfying conclusion--with inner moral experience. Reclaiming the work of a generation of Victorian "intuitionist" philosophers who insisted that true morality consisted in being able to feel or intuit the morally good, Jesse Rosenthal shows that when Victorians discussed the moral dimensions of reading novels, they were also subtly discussing the genre's formal properties. For most, Victorian moralizing is one of the period's least attractive and interesting qualities. But "Good Form" argues that the moral interpretation of novel experience was essential in the development of the novel form--and that this moral approach is still a fundamental, if unrecognized, part of how we understand novels.

Ethics in literature. --- English literature --- English fiction --- English fiction. --- English literature. --- History and criticism. --- 1800-1899