Afterword

romanticism's forms

Susan J. Wolfson

pp. 213-224

in: Alan Rawes (ed), Romanticism and form, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007

Abstract

What is the agency of form, and how might it matter in processing information? Nicholas Bakalar and Gillian Beer suggest, in a line that some recent critiques of formalism might endorse, that the force of form is surreptitious: it invades the field of information, plays its tricks, slips its influence under the radar of conscious consideration. Rhyming a slogan greases the rails of information, sliding the tenor on a seductive vehicle. And though Nicholas Bakalar does not mention this, metre matters, too: the briskly accented rhyming of "woes unto foes" is more felicitous than the clunky double-dactyl "woes unto enemies". Just so, we say: snappy rhyme and rhythm are the signature of commercial, political or courtroom sloganeering — the foes might be cockroaches or criminals (it scarcely matters). Johnny Cochran deployed the formal force at the O. J. Simpson murder trial: "if it doesn't fit, you must acquit", he proposed to the jury considering the glove-exhibit. Gillian Beer nicely assays the cagey work of the device: the wit of rhyme is to re-seed the semantic field, re-organise meaning-making, re-conceive it, even, in its verbal yokings.