Adorno's Poetics of Form

Josh Robinson is Lecturer in English Literature at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom.

• Abbreviations of Works by AdornoAcknowledgmentsIntroductionFormAdornoPoeticsPhilologyConstellation1. Form and ContentAdorno and Heidegger: The Form of the Thing‘Parataxis’Parataxis and Linguistic FormForm as Sedimented ContentParataxis in Adorno’s reading of ‘Der Einzige’Consequences for Form and Content2. Form and ExpressionThe Mediation of Form and ExpressionLiterary and Musical ExpressionismExpressionism and SurrealismKafkaMimesisConsequences for the Theory of Form3. Form and GenreThe Fraying of BordersThe Genesis of the FormsUniversal and ParticularNominalism and its DiscontentsBourgeois Art and the Culture IndustryThe Novel as FormTheory of the Essay4. Form and MaterialMaterial and ContentTechnique and the Mastery of MaterialLanguage and PoetryThe Literary Manifestation of Form and MaterialConsequences for the Theory of Form5. Artistic Form and the Commodity FormSocial and Abstract LaborAbstraction and ExchangeMediation and FormPurposiveness, Communication, LanguagePoetry and ReconciliationArt Beauty and Natural BeautyPriority of the ObjectCodaLyricEngaging FormBeyond the New FormalismConclusionNotesWorks CitedIndex

"Adorno's Poetics of Form is at once a kind of casebook (Robinson has read a lot of Adorno so you don't have to) and a critical work (Robinson has drawn out implicit Adornoian concerns and drawn together a constellation of formal concerns). Taken together, this simply means that Adorno's Poetics of Form invites (and deserves) the same kind of attention it gives to its collection of texts." — Mediations"In Adorno's Poetics of Form, Josh Robinson carries out a necessary and fruitful investigation into the way we think about art, and the potential embedded in particular works … Robinson has produced a highly readable and accomplished contribution to the scholarship on Theodor Adorno's aesthetic project as it pertains to the question of form, and a thought-provoking reformation of the Marxist theory of art." — Phenomenological Reviews