Susan J. Wolfson

Bio: Susan J. Wolfson is an academic researcher from Princeton University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Poetry & Romanticism. The author has an hindex of 14, co-authored 60 publications receiving 712 citations.

Formal Charges: The Shaping of Poetry in British Romanticism

Abstract: Abbreviations 1. Formal intelligence: formalism, romanticism, and formalist criticism 2. Sketching verbal form: Blake's Political Sketches 3. The formings of simile: Coleridge's 'comparing power' 4. Revision as form: Wordsworth's drowned man 5. Heroic form: couplets, 'self', and Byron's Corsair 6. Teasing form: the crisis of Keats's last lyrics 7. Social form: Shelley and the determination of reading Notes Index.

Borderlines: The Shiftings of Gender in British Romanticism

Abstract: Contents Acknowledgments iii Preface iii List of Illustrations iii Chapter One On the Borderlines of Gendered Language 0 Two Women Chapter Two Felicia Hemans and the Stages of "The Feminine" 00 Chapter Three The Generations of "Masculine" Woman 000 Chapter Four Woman's Life and "Masculine" Energy: The History of Maria Jane Jewsbury 000 Two Men Chapter Five Lord Byron, Sardanapalus and "Effeminate Character" 000 Chapter Six Gender as Cross-Dressing: Don Juan 000 Chapter Seven Keats and Gender Acts 000 Chapter Eight Gendering Keats 000 Chapter Nine Sex in Souls? Texts and Abbreviations 000 Works Cited 000 Index 000

Reading for Form

Abstract: As the winter of the Starr inquiry daily dissolved the Clinton presidency into scandals involving Gap dress and power tie, the New York Times offered relief with a foray into the subculture of teenage fashion. “Cracking the Dress Code: How a School Uniform Becomes a Fashion Statement” provided a less lurid moment of cultural formation.1 “It’s how you want to look,” said one student, unflapped by the prescription at the School of the Incarnation for white blouse, navy skirt, or slacks for girls, white shirt and navy slacks for boys. With the dressers performing as both critics and artists, the basic material proved negotiable, the dress code itself an inspiring resource. Subtle accessorizing ( just cautious enough to evade a bust) was one route, a use of artful supplement, perhaps so artful that only the wearer knew for sure. The school uniform itself proved multiform, its deformation the syntax of fashion-statement: the arrangement of collars and cuffs, the interpretation of white, the use or nonuse of sweater buttons, the number of rolls to take in a skirt waistband, form-fitting to baggyslouching pants, knotting the tie, indulging the frisson of unseen underwear—all opportunities to perform with and within the uniform. One student’s gloss on this material culture casually and cannily fell into the form of an irregular couplet (I render the lines):

The Shows of London

Abstract: 'A panoramic history of exhibitions, 1600 - 1862.' Encyclopedic account of every kind of published exhibition in London from the 17th to the 19th centuries. Describes the growth of museums; showmen with strange sights; the eidophusikon; panoramas; dioramas; optical and mechanical shows like the cosmorama, phantasmagoria, magic lantern shows; scientific displays, including the panopticon; wild beast shows; the Great Exhibition; art shows; photography. Fully illustrated in black and white.

What Is New Formalism

Abstract: This review of new formalism poses challenges very different from those of the familiar compendium-review genre (e.g., “The Year's Work in Victorian Studies”). While all review essays face questions of inclusion, in an assignment of this kind, where the defining category is neither an established period nor topic but a developing theory or method emerging from the entire repertoire of literary and cultural studies, identifying the scholarly literature is a critical task in its own right. Moreover, because new formalism is better described as a movement than a theory or method, the work of selection is especially vexed and consequential. It is vexed because the practitioners' modes and degrees of identification with the movement are so various, and consequential because the reviewer's bibliographic decisions cannot help but construct the phenomenon being described.

The Provincial Book Trade in Eighteenth-Century England: Subscribers to Thomas Hervey's The Writer's Time Redeemed

Abstract: List of illustrations Preface Acknowledgements Note on sources Note on dates and places Abbreviations 1. London and the country 2. A century of growth 3. The market for books 4. The distribution system 5. The bookselling business 6. The printing office Conclusion Appendices Notes Index of the provincial book trade General index.

Forms of Self-Implication in Literary Reading

Abstract: Literary reading has the capacity to implicate the self and deepen self- understanding, but little is known about how and when these effects occur. The present article examines two forms of self-implication in literary reading. In one form, which functions like simile, there is explicitly recognized similarity between personal memories and some aspect of the world of the text (A is like B). In another form, which functions like metaphor, the reader becomes identified with some aspect of the world of the text, usually the narrator or a character (A is B). These forms of self-implication can be differentiated within readers' open-ended comments about their reading experiences.The results of a phenomenological study indicate that such metaphors of personal identification are a pivotal feature of expressive enactment, a type of reading experience marked by (1) explicit descriptions of feelings in response to situations and events in the text, (2) blurred boundaries between oneself and the narrator of the text, and (3) active and iterative modification of an emergent affec- tive theme. The self-modifying feelings characteristic of expressive enactment give it a fugal form, manifest as thematic developments that move toward saturation, rich- ness, and depth. The results of an experimental study suggest that expressive enact- ment occurs frequently among individuals who remain depressed about a signifi- cant loss that occurred some time ago. Together with the phenomenological study,