Liberal formalisms

Abstract

The recent efflorescence of scholarship on Victorian liberalism was facilitated by the return of formalism as a methodological paradigm. The ‘new’ formalism is characterised by a focus on the literary adaptation of Enlightenment concepts and practices, which critics have analysed in two distinct ways: one movement seeks to explore literature’s potential to foster certain modes of attention, whereas the other aims to reinvigorate the critique of ideology with a formalist impetus. This bifurcation can also be detected in current work on Victorian liberalism. In various ways, certain scholars have shown that Victorian writers reassessed the idea of the aesthetic in an attempt to modify and renew the idea of self-reflexive reason, while others have unpacked the relation between the development of literary forms and their expression of lived experience. The author suggests that this body of work could be enriched by an acknowledgement of the importance of the literary text’s articulation of propositional knowledge. A formalism that would allow this aspect to be paraphrased could reveal theories that complement Victorian liberalism, such as civic republicanism. Just as formalism is intertwined with the practice of paraphrasing, indeed, so is the relationship between Victorian liberalism and civic republicanism mutually constitutive rather than exclusive. The author concludes these theoretical reflections with a short reading of a passage from Anthony Trollope’s Phineas Finn.