"I take it that form is a biological need." -- Lukacs in a letter to Leo Popper.

See Paul de Man's essay "Georg Lukacs' Theory of the Novel," 1966 (on JSTOR). "The
novel, to the contrary, wishing to avoid this most destructive form of fragmentation
remains rooted instead in the particularity of experience; as an epical genre, it can
never give up its contact with empirical reality, which is an inherent part of its own
form. But, in a time of alienation, it is forced to represent this reality as imperfect, as
steadily striving to move beyond the boundaries that restrict it, as constantly
experiencing and resenting the inadequacy of its own size and shape. 'In the novel,
what is constituted is not the totality of life but rather the relationship, the valid or
mistaken position of the writer who enters the scene as an empirical subject in his
full stature, but also in his full limitation as a mere creature, towards this totality"
(531). But isn't this exactly Ann Middleton's case for Piers & Invention of
Experience? De Man also makes an important point about how Lukacs justifies The
Sentimental Education by talking about time in the novel -- time not just as negative,
but as a positive principle; which means, for de Man, that "time in this essay acts as a
substitute for the organic continuity which Lukacs seems unable to do without. Such
a linear conception of time had in fact been present throughout the essay. Hence the
necessity of narrating the development of the novel as a continuous event, as the
fallen form of the archetypal Greek epic which is treated as an ideal concept but
given actual historical existence"

Preface

It is quite fascinating that Lukacs claims he had initially begun to write the Theory of
the Novel in the form of Boccaccio's Tales. Was the situation in Europe so hopeless,
then, that it was comparable to the plague-ridden Florence of the 14th century?
Interesting, too, given that Boccaccio's interest is not in the mutual relation between
form, world, and essence. Or is it? Perhaps Lukacs' project here might illuminate
Boccaccio's endeavors in the Decameron. (The Decameron is also a go-to text for Bill
Brown, in the Material Unconscious, thinking about spaces of leisure). The place of
Dostoievsky in Lukacs' work is deeply puzzling. How is Dostoievsky not a "novelist"?
How does he overcome the problems that Lukacs poses for the novel form?

Lukacs' main project: "a general dialectic of literary genres" (16).

Kierkegaard seems to figure in his thought as one that upsets the conformist present
of Hegel (an excuse to talk about "the age of absolute sinfulness"). In a way, also to
bring "existence" in as a primordial category of thought.

Integrated Civilization

Part of what it means to have an integrated civilization: every impulse is "co-

ordinated with a form" that it is ignorant of, but that has been assigned to it from
eternity (30).
Boethius and Lukacs: the divinity athat rules the world and distrubutes the
unknown and unjust gifts of destiny (30).

"the mind's attitude within such a home is a passively visionary acceptance of

ready-made, ever-present meaning. The world of meaning can be grasped, it can be
taken in at a glance; all that is necessary is to find the locus that has been
predestined for each individual. Error, here, can only be a matter of too much or too
little, only a failure of measure or insight. For knowledge is only the raising of a veil,
creation only the copying of visible and eternal essences... It is a homogeneous
world" (32).

"What he should do or be is, for him, only a pedagogical question, an expression of

the fact that he has not yet come home; it does not yet express his only,
insurmountable relationship with the substance. Nor is there, within man himself,
any compulsion to make the leap: he bears the stain of teh distance that separates
matter from substance, he will be cleansed by an immaterial soaring that will bring
him closer to the substance; a long road lies before him, but within him there is no
abyss" (33).

Lukacs imagines that in the realm of totality of being "everything is already

homogeneous before it has been contained by forms... forms are not a constraint but
only the becoming conscious" (34). But see Fradenburg!!!

Claims Plato's transcendence to be "tangible and graspable" (35).

Answer precedes the question: the epic gives rise to forms that pose the question
that the epic had already answered.

Talk of the medievals, pp. 37-8.

"the very disintegration and inadequacy of the world is the precondition for the
existence of art and its becoming conscious" (38).

carrying "the fragmentary nature of the world's structure" into "the world of
forms"--isn't that precisely what is going on with Piers?

The Problem of the History of Forms

Dialectic of forms emerges as a result of loss of transcendental locus. A priori origin

or "home" for each genre.

Distinguishes surface-level changes from the kind of "original form-giving

principles" that define the philosophical basis of genre. Question: What is the form-
giving principle in Piers Plowman, in Chaucer, in Gower... in Pound, in Woolf, in H.D.?
See the Invention of Experience for one such form-giving principle, that of the dialogue.
Does that go deep enough? Especially if one takes de Man's criticism seriously--namely,
that Lukacs remains overly committed to linear time. Once you remove that fetish-
object, then mightn't his historical-philosophical theory of forms work to bring Pound
and langland together?