Price, LeahSussman, Matthew Benjamin2013-10-182013-10-182013Sussman, Matthew Benjamin. 2013. Stylistic Virtue in Nineteenth-Century Fiction. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University.http://dissertations.umi.com/gsas.harvard:11097http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:11181103To many readers, the Victorian novel is synonymous with moral insight and Victorian criticism with moral philistinism. While the novel remains celebrated for its complex treatment of decision-making and sympathy, the evaluative judgments of Victorian critics have been dismissed as thematically reductive and imprecise. However, this study argues that the virtue terms that pervade Victorian discourse--words like "natural," "manly," "lucid," and "sincere"--invest sentence-level stylistic properties with ethical value because they embody aesthetic character. Rather than focus on the novel's action, characters, or themes, these "stylistic virtues" ascribe moral significance to "literariness" itself.en-USLiteraturePhilosophyAestheticsEthicsNovelPhilosophyStyleVictorianThesis or Dissertation