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(2007) Romanticism and form, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
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.
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Full citation:
Wolfson, S. J. (2007)., Afterword: romanticism's forms, in A. Rawes (ed.), Romanticism and form, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 213-224.
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