Jody Griffith is Assistant Teaching Professor of English at Penn State Scranton.

"For Jody Griffith, 'form' is not merely a controversial topic for twenty-first-century literary critics: it's also the architectural form of John Ruskin, living and changing over time. Her book blends contemporary methods with nineteenth-century ideas to arrive at original formalist readings of the Victorian novel." — Rachel Teukolsky, Vanderbilt University

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: "All Men Are Builders": Victorian Structures1. Within the Walls: Freedom and Obedience in Little Dorrit 2. Constructing Novel Time in Ordinary Time: The Architectural Structure of Eliot's Realism3. "As We Lay Stone on Stone": Mediating the Past in The Mayor of Casterbridge 4. "Modern Thought... in Such Decrepit and Superseded Chambers": Disintegrating Structures in Jude the Obscure Conclusion: "The Action of the Imagination": Building Perceptions of TruthNotesWorks CitedIndex

Jody Griffith is Assistant Teaching Professor of English at Penn State Scranton.

"For Jody Griffith, 'form' is not merely a controversial topic for twenty-first-century literary critics: it's also the architectural form of John Ruskin, living and changing over time. Her book blends contemporary methods with nineteenth-century ideas to arrive at original formalist readings of the Victorian novel." — Rachel Teukolsky, Vanderbilt University

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: "All Men Are Builders": Victorian Structures1. Within the Walls: Freedom and Obedience in Little Dorrit 2. Constructing Novel Time in Ordinary Time: The Architectural Structure of Eliot's Realism3. "As We Lay Stone on Stone": Mediating the Past in The Mayor of Casterbridge 4. "Modern Thought... in Such Decrepit and Superseded Chambers": Disintegrating Structures in Jude the Obscure Conclusion: "The Action of the Imagination": Building Perceptions of TruthNotesWorks CitedIndex

Jody Griffith is Assistant Teaching Professor of English at Penn State Scranton.

"For Jody Griffith, 'form' is not merely a controversial topic for twenty-first-century literary critics: it's also the architectural form of John Ruskin, living and changing over time. Her book blends contemporary methods with nineteenth-century ideas to arrive at original formalist readings of the Victorian novel." — Rachel Teukolsky, Vanderbilt University

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: "All Men Are Builders": Victorian Structures1. Within the Walls: Freedom and Obedience in Little Dorrit 2. Constructing Novel Time in Ordinary Time: The Architectural Structure of Eliot's Realism3. "As We Lay Stone on Stone": Mediating the Past in The Mayor of Casterbridge 4. "Modern Thought... in Such Decrepit and Superseded Chambers": Disintegrating Structures in Jude the Obscure Conclusion: "The Action of the Imagination": Building Perceptions of TruthNotesWorks CitedIndex