earticle

영어

This research proposes to investigate the newly emerging interest in “form” as an important critical method in the Romantic studies for the last two decades. Romantic formal criticism, distinct from formalism in the past, is in the course of reshaping discussions of Romantic literature. Before 1990, “form” had been largely marginalized in the long history of Romantic studies. New criticism, Deconstruction, and New Historicism shared the common ground in that they all subscribed to the traditional idea of “Romantic organicism.” As a result, generic experimentation was disregarded, and discussions of Romantic literature were confined within the boundary of lyricism, without the due attention to its concern with history and the audience. Reversing this tradition, formal criticism views concepts such as “organic coherence” or “cognitive totality” in negative lights, and instead, takes interest in formal instability and indetermination. Romantic formal criticism is also characterized by its strong commitment to historical analysis. William Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey” is a good example that shows a revised reading informed by formal criticism. While its affinity to the “ode” reveals the dialectic quality and a resistance to closure, as a “conversation poem,” it constantly oscillates between sameness and otherness as is apparent in the figure of Dorothy as the “past self.”