In this section of the Propylaean Academy, we are offering a sequence of statements, culled from different authors and periods of history, which underscore, in one fashion or another, the importance of form in literary and other arts. Moreover, what is actually meant by form can vary rather considerably from one passage to the next, or even within the same passage. All too often the term form is used in some fairly restrictive sense to refer to an aspect of form, or to a particular kind of form, that can be found within the larger form of an artistic structure.
Form sometimes is used to mean genre.
In Aristotle's Poetics , it is easy to get the impression that mythos or plot is considered to be the fundamental schema of a poetic work. This leads to yet another problem which has to do with the question of where form actually exists-in the object itself or in the mind which apprehends it, the potential relatability of elements in a structure being apprehended by the intellect as actual relation . In practice, the mind can make up anything it wants to make up, as well as be subject, in any number of ways and for any number of reasons, to error. But this is where verification, in whatever mode verification is conducted, is relevant-even to aesthetic response and the analysis of artistic structure which, in a critical act, follows from it and seeks to understand it. In any event, we hope that our assortment of passages provides a witness to the enduring interest in formal structure throughout the ages.