1.5 Formalism/Russian Formalism
Chapter 1: From Liberal Humanism to Formalism
M.A.R. Habib, Modern Literary Criticism and Theory: A History
Formalism/Russian Formalism
•Literature is no longer viewed as aiming to represent reality or character or impart moral lessons
•Literature is considered autonomous and autotelic (having its aims internal to itself)
•Literature is unique mode of expression, not an extension of rhetoric or philosophy or history or social or psychological documentary
Russian Formalism
•Flourished during Russian Revolution in 1917
•Formalists and Futurists found a common platform in the journal LEF (Left Front of Art)
•Two schools of Russian Formalism (Moscow Linguistic Circle, Society for the Study of Poetic Language)
Moscow Linguistic Circle (1915)
•Led by Roman Jakobson
•Osip Brik, Boris Tomashevsky
Society for the Study of Poetic Language (1916)
•Victor Shklovsky, Boris Eichenbaum, Yuri Tynyanov
(Leo Jakubinsky, Vladimir Propp)
Formalists’ analyses were theoretical, seeking to understand the general nature of literature and literary devices, as well as the historical evolution of literary techniques
Victor Shklovksy (1893-1984)
•Founding member of the Society for the Study of Poetic Language
•“Art as Technique” (1917)
•Introduces defamiliarization: our normal perceptions become habitual, they become automatic and unconscious: in everyday speech, for example, we leave phrases unfinished and words half-expressed.
•This is symptomatic of a process of algebrization, which infects our ordinary perceptions where things are replaced by symbols
•The technique of art is to make objects “unfamiliar” to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged.
•Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object; the object is not important.
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