“Assemblage of devices”
Eagleton reports, "The Formalists started out by seeing the literary work as a more or less arbitrary assemblage of 'devices,' and only later came to see these devices as interrelated elements." The metaphorical assemblage implies that from the Functionalist perspective literary compositions are constructed by contents such as "sound, imagery, rhythm, syntax, metre, rhyme, narrative techniques." Accordingly, the lack of devices would render a work a non-literary.
‘Sick and Heal’
Eagleton reports, “George Gordon, early professor of English Literature at Oxford, commented in his inaugural lecture that ‘England is sick and…English Literature must save it.’ The Churches ( as I understand) having failed, and social remedies being slow, English literature has now a triple function: still, I suppose, to delight and instruct as, but also, and above all, to save our souls and heal the State.” The metaphorical sickness alludes to England’s social deterioration which is ascribed to the failure of religion. The Victorians lose their faith in religion which renders them spiritually sick. Gordon’s recommendation implies that literature possesses a mystical capacity to ameliorate England's degeneration through ideologies that are social permissible.
Battered
Engels expounds, “Eighteenth-century England had emerged, battered but intact, from a bloody civil war in the previous century which had set the social classes at each other's throats; and in the drive to reconsolidate a shaken social order, the neo-classical notions of Reason, Nature, order and propriety, epitomized in art, were key concepts.” The metaphorical battering refers to the rife conflicts which negatively impacted the interactions among individuals in various social classes. Literature became a viable tool for ameliorating the adverse effects of the battering. Literature was modified to accommodate all social classes.
“Idle Escapism”
Engels describes, “As the working class responds with militant protest to this oppression, and as troubling memories of revolution across the Channel still haunt their rulers…during part of the Romantic period, into what is in effect a police state. In the face of such forces, the privilege accorded by the Romantics to the 'creative imagination' can be seen as considerably more than idle escapism.” Indulging in creative writing permits the creative writers to escape from the adverse implications of “industrial capitalism.” Instead of being weighed down by the ‘wage-slavery’ writers opt to write. Psychoanalytically, the ‘idle escapism” is equivalent to sublimation which soothes the writers.
Commodity
Engels confirms, “Art was becoming a commodity like anything else, and the Romantic artist little more than a minor commodity producer; for all his rhetorical claim to be 'representative' of humankind, to speak with the voice of the people and utter eternal verities, he existed more and more on the margins of a society which was not inclined to pay high wages to prophets.” Transforming art into a commodity reduces its intrinsic value. Accordingly, the issues which the romantic artists explore in their works are not highly valued. Commoditization of art puts the artist in precarious situation whereby their works, no matter how excellent, are not appreciated.
