The Endurance of Formalism in Middle English Studies

Abstract

In spite of the historicism that has dominated medieval English literary study for the past two decades, formalist approaches will not go away. Not only is close reading still the default mode of pedagogy for many medievalists, but certain genres (especially the Middle English lyric) still attract formalist criticism. This article argues that historicist criticism has excluded such genres from the current mainstream of literary history, and that, to some extent, the canon of Middle English literature (and, in particular, of Chaucerian production) has been reshaped according to historicist critical and ideological goals. But there remains a place for the study of form, as formal patterns (in the words of the critic Franco Moretti), 'are what literature uses in order to master historical reality'. Formalist analysis in medieval literary study needs to be reclaimed from its New Critical close reading, but it also needs to be seen as the place where aesthetics and ideology may come together.At this moment in the history of literary studies, the word historicism -indeed, the very word history -has become highly charged both in the specific field of Medieval Studies and in literary criticism generally. 1 * * * The word 'formalism' raises many specters. Not the least of them is Russian Formalism, the critical approach of the first third of the twentieth century that sought to understand the unique nature of literary language

1 Literary value and the object of Chaucer studies

“…In this essay, Lerer expresses dissatisfaction with New Critical readings of Middle English lyrics that then still held currency (and had led to the genre's relative marginalisation, even in respect to the already marginal subfield of Middle English Studies), and he concludes by calling for a renewed attention to form as a locus of historical contingency. 34 With this exhortation Lerer took a position that had affinity with the growing array of approaches, originally developed in respect to the literatures of other periods, that was beginning to be called New Formalism. As in Lerer's essay, many of those who have embraced this sort of approach (whether or not under that label) understand it to be more of a correction or an expansion of historicism than a rejection.…”

New Formalism and the Forms of Middle English Literary Texts

“…He notes, ‘The old verities about medieval “literature” as simply “formal writing that gives or purports to give pleasure (with or without edification)” ’, have been troubled by critical reassessments that challenge ‘the very question of what “formal writing” itself might have been’ (‘Dum Ludis Floribus’ 237). At the same time, his recent survey, ‘The Endurance of Formalism in Middle English Studies’, demonstrates the persistence of formalist approaches throughout a period which has emphasized historicist and ideological approaches to literature. Faced with a genre (the lyric) that has often resisted historicization due to the opaqueness of its material contexts, Lerer notes that formalist approaches appear to predominate 5…”

“…For Cannon, the manuscript form of a text is ultimately subordinated to the formal features of the text; it provides context but not literary nuance. Although Seth Lerer seeks to include manuscript studies within the realm of formalist inquiry for him, ultimately, a study of form of Middle English texts ‘is a study of its formats’ (‘The Endurance of Formalism’ 10). In spite of the paronomastic felicity of this statement, the equation of the form of a text and its manuscript format (or in our model, the two different types of form) conceals the complex negotiation between the meanings produced by the words of a text and how they appear on the page 6 .…”

“…5 5 Lerer traces the history of formalism in Middle English studies from E. Talbot Donaldson and the Exegetical researches of D. W. Robertson and his heirs to later historicist works, such as Lee Patterson’s Negotiating the Past , Paul Strohm’s Social Chaucer , and David Wallace’s Chaucerian Polity which effectively ‘transformed English medieval literary studies into a overwhelmingly historicist enterprise’(‘Endurance of Formalism’ 1). However, he goes onto point out that a formalist penchant for refined close readings still underlies the work of critics, such as Carolyn Dinshaw among others.…”