Formal Matters: Embodied Experience in Modern Literature

Formal Matters re—examines the postmodernist insistence that the body escapes signification by turning to an unexpected source: early and mid—century formalisms. Bringing together formalism’s endeavour to give shape to the ineffable with postmodernism’s discursive body, the book argues that embodiment—or the experience of the lived, corporeal body—is not what resists representation but what constitutes form.
Working at the intersection of formalist criticism, phenomenology, and body studies...