Table of Contents

Introduction New Formalisms?; M.D.Rasmussen PART I: TOWARD A HISTORICAL FORMALISM Between Form and Culture: New Historicism and the Promise of a Historical Formalism; S.Cohen Shakespeare and the Composite Text; D.Bruster The Politics of Aesthetics: Recuperating Formalism and the Country House Poem; H.Dubrow Marston's Gorge and the Question of Formalism; J.Loewenstein PART II: RENEWING THE LITERARY Learning from the New Criticism: The Example of Shakespeare's Sonnets; P.Alpers The Aesthetics of Shakespearean Wordplay; M.Womack The Poetics of Speeck Tags; W.Flesch Flirting with Eternity: Teaching from a Meter in a Renaissance Literature Class; E.H.Sagaser Afterword: How Formalism Became a Dirty Word, and Why We Can't Do Without It; R.Strier

Promotional Information

PAUL ALPERS Class of 1942 Professor of English Emeritus, University of California DOUGLAS BRUSTER Assistant Professor of English, University of Texas, Austin STEPHEN COHEN Assistant Professor of English, University of South Alabama HEATHER DUBROW Tighe-Evans Professor and John Bascom Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison WILLIAM FLESCH Lecturer in English, Brandeis University JOSEPH LOEWENSTEIN Lecturer, Washington University ELIZABETH HARRIS SAGASER Assistant Professor in Literature, Colby College MARK WOMACK Assistant Professor of English, University of Texas, San Antonio

About the Author

MARK DAVID RASMUSSEN is Associate Professor and Chair of English at Centre College, where he teaches medieval and renaissance literature. He has published essays on Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and the poetics of complaint. AE(00): Afterword by RICHARD STRIER

Reviews

These essays brilliantly display the pleasures offormalism and constitute a rigorous and thrilling demonstration of its indispensability. - Stanley Fish, Dean, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago.