Introduction: The Nature of Form

This forum joins the numerous critical voices that have, in recent years, called for a renewed discussion of literary and aesthetic form and its present and future place in the field of literary study. Whereas many previous discussions have turned to questions of what exactly form is, this forum seeks to shift the ground from questions of being to questions of doing. Taking up Cold War Americanist criticism, the recipe form, Victorian painting, and the intersection of form with issues of race and disability, this forum demonstrates the astonishing variety of things that formalism has done and can do as a mode of critical practice.