Stylistic Virtue and Victorian Fiction
Form, Ethics, and the Novel

Offers a deep history of style in theory and practice that transforms our understanding of style in the novel.

Matthew Sussman (Author)

9781108832946, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 1 July 2021

236 pages
23.5 x 15.7 x 1.7 cm, 0.54 kg

'Matthew Sussman fascinatingly connects two concepts that today's reader would be more likely to oppose: style and virtue. Sussman's striking claim in the book is that the verbal qualities of a text, even when considered separately from the text's content, can have ethical or moral value … One of its invaluable contributions to the field is to situate Victorian fiction in a long history of rhetorical criticism that takes Aristotle's Art of Rhetoric as its source of inspiration. In chapters that are both philosophically robust and painstakingly researched, Sussman establishes how stylistic virtues resemble moral virtues in providing a characterological ideal.' Judging Panel, 2021 AUHE Prize for Literary Scholarship

What is style, and why does it matter? This book answers these questions by recovering the concept of 'stylistic virtue,' once foundational to rhetoric and aesthetics but largely forgotten today. Stylistic virtues like 'ease' and 'grace' are distinguishing properties that help realize a text's essential character. First described by Aristotle, they were integral to the development of formalist methods and modern literary criticism. The first half of the book excavates the theory of stylistic virtue during its period of greatest ascendance, in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when belletristic rhetoric shaped how the art of literary style and 'the aesthetic' were understood. The second half offers new readings of Thackeray, Trollope, and Meredith to show how stylistic virtue changes our understanding of style in the novel and challenges conventional approaches to interpreting the ethics of art.

Acknowledgments
List of Illustrations
Introduction: What Is Stylistic Virtue?
1. Stylistic Virtue and the Rise of Literary Formalism
2. Stylistic Virtue between Moralism and Aestheticism
3. Virtue Theory and the Nature of the Aesthetic
4. Thackeray's Grace
5. Trollope's Ease and Lucidity
6. Meredith's Fervidness
Afterword: Stylistic Virtue and Literary Value
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 [DSBF], Literary theory [DSA], Language: history & general works [CBX]