Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T06:37:04.749Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Commitment to Form; or, Still Crazy after All These Years

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

W. J. T. Mitchell
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Having counted the adjectives, and weighed the lines, and measured the rhythms, a Formalist either stops silent with the expression of a man who does not know what to do with himself, or throws out an unexpected generalization which contains five per cent of Formalism and ninety-five per cent of the most uncritical intuition.

—Trotsky, Literature and Revolution (ch. 5)

Bring out number weight & measure in a year of dearth.

—Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (35)

Everyone knows that the concept of form has outlived its usefulness in discussions of literature, the arts, and media. The word does not appear in the recent handbooks of critical terms in art history and literary studies issued by the University of Chicago Press (Nelson and Shiff; Lentricchia and McLaughlin), and it appears in Raymond Williams's classic glossary, Keywords, only in its derivative (and mainly pejorative) form as an “-ism,” as in the phrase “mere formalism.” Formalists, as we know, are harmless drudges who spend their days counting syllables, measuring line lengths, and weighing emphases (Trotsky), or they are decadent aesthetes who waste their time celebrating beauty and other ineffable, indefinable qualities of works of art. If form has any afterlife in the study of literature, its role has been completely overtaken by the concept of structure, which rightly emphasizes the artificial, constructed character of cultural forms and defuses the idealist and organicist overtones that surround the concept of form.

Type
Theories and Methodologies
Information
PMLA , Volume 118 , Issue 2 , March 2003 , pp. 321 - 325
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2003

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Adorno, Theodor. “Commitment.” Trans. Andrew Arato. The Essential Frankfurt School Reader. Ed. Arato, and Gebhardt, Elke. New York: Continuum, 1982. 300–18. Trans. of “Engagement oder kunsterlische Autonomie.” Die neue Rundschau 75.1 (1964).Google Scholar
Adorno, Theodor. “Commitment.” Notes to Literature. Trans. Shierry Weber Nicholsen. Vol. 2. New York: Columbia UP, 1992. 76–94. Trans. of “Engagement oder kunsterlische Autonomie.” Die neue Rundschau 75.1 (1964).Google Scholar
Adorno, Theodor. “The Essay as Form.” Notes to Literature. Trans. Shierry Weber Nicholsen. Vol. 1. New York: Columbia UP, 1992. 3–23.Google Scholar
Bennett, Tony. Formalism and Marxism. London: Methuen, 1979.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blake, William. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. The Poetry and Prose of William Blake. Ed. Erdman, David. Garden City: Doubleday, 1965. 33–44.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. “For a Scholarship with Commitment.” Profession 2000. New York: MLA, 2000. 40–45.Google Scholar
Hartman, Geoffrey. Beyond Formalism. New Haven: Yale UP, 1970.Google Scholar
Jameson, Fredric. Marxism and Form. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1972.Google Scholar
Frank, Lentricchia, and McLaughlin, Thomas, eds. Critical Terms for Literary Study. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1990.Google Scholar
Mitchell, W. J. T. “The Last Formalist; or, W. J. T. Mitchell as Romantic Dinosaur.” Interview with Orrin N. C. Wang. Romantic Circles Praxis Series. Ed. Wang and John Morillo. Aug. 1997. U of Maryland. 2 Dec. 2002 <http://www.rc.umd.edu/praxis/mitchell/mitch-cover.html>..>Google Scholar
Mitchell, W. J. T. Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1994.Google Scholar
Robert, Nelson, and Shiff, Richard, eds. Critical Terms for Art History. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996.Google Scholar
Rowe, John Carlos. “Structure.” Lentricchia and McLaughlin 23–37.Google Scholar
Said, Edward W. After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives. Photographs by Jean Mohr. New York: Pantheon, 1985.Google Scholar
Trotsky, Leon. Literature and Revolution. New York: Russell, 1957. Transcribed by N. Vaklovisky. The Leon Trotsky Internet Archive. June 2000. 2 Jan. 2002 <http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1924/lit_revo/index.htm>.Google Scholar
Williams, Raymond. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. New York: Oxford UP, 1985.Google Scholar
Wordsworth, William. The Prelude. William Wordsworth: The Prelude, Selected Poems and Sonnets. Ed. Baker, Carlos. New York: Holt, Rinehart, 1948. 203–438.Google Scholar