Collations: Book Forum on Jesse Rosenthal’s Good Form: The Ethical Experience of the Victorian Novel

Collations: Book Forum welcomes Thomas Albrecht (Tulane), Daniel Pollack-Pelzner (Linfield College), and Katherine Voyles (U of Washington, Bothell) in discussing Jesse Rosenthal’s Good Form: The Ethical Experience of the Victorian Novel. In his insightful new work, Rosenthal masterfully weaves together philosophy and fiction to contemplate the “moral conceptualizations of narrative form” (5) for Victorian writers and readers. Incorporating a fuller elaboration of nineteenth-century theories of “intuition” and “intuitive judgment,” Good Form reveals how Victorian readers understood and experienced the relationship between ethics and novel form–with that form taking on “moral dimensions” (2) hitherto incompletely comprehended. Victorians had, Rosenthal argues, a more sophisticated apprehension of formalism than we typically give them credit. Like Rosenthal, our discussants take inspiration from Victorian conceptions of ethics and form to contemplate the value of thinking with them, as opposed simply to about them, as they could reshape our own professional practices and habits.

Since Collations is designed to be something quite distinct from a standard book review, we hope that our readers will help us keep its dynamic interchange going in the comments section, sharing thoughts, experiences, and questions of their own.

Reflection by Thomas Albrecht	Reflection by Daniel Pollack-Pelzner	Reflection by Katherine Voyles
Daniel Pollack-Pelzner responds Katherine Voyles responds	Thomas Albrecht responds Katherine Voyles responds	Thomas Albrecht responds Daniel Pollack-Pelzner responds

Maeve Adams, editor, V21 Collations: Book Forum