Afterword: Romanticism’s Forms

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.

People respond to easily processed information [...]. For example, they are more likely to believe an aphorism that rhymes (‘woes unto foes’) than one with an identical meaning that does not rhyme (‘woes unto enemies’). (Nicholas Bakalar, The New York Times)¹ We read forwards; we rhyme backwards [...]. Rhyme is de- formation; a first, apparently rationally sanctioned word, is tripped and changed (both semantically and aurally) by the rhyme word. [...] The second word invades, splices to itself engrafted signs, charges the boundaries of the single term. Pounce or slide, the second word moves in on the first and tricks it into rhyme, claims kinship against the odds. (Gillian Beer, ‘Rhyming as Comedy’)²