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Why Has Aesthetic Formalism Fallen On Hard Times?, David E.W. Fenner

Philosophy and Religious Studies Faculty Research and Scholarship

Nick Zangwill has done more than any person recently to resuscitate aesthetic formalism. I say "resuscitate" because formalism has not been in favor for several decades. Zangwill writes that "Aesthetic Formalism has fallen on hard times. At best it receives unsympathetic discussion and swift rejection. At worse it is the object of abuse and derision." The reasons many today believe aesthetic formalism is not viable have been the subject of discussion since the pendulum swing away from New Criticism, via the work of William Wimsatt, Cleanth Brooks, Clement Greenberg, André Levinson, and Heinrich Wolfflin. Most of these reasons have been …