THE FORMALIST APPROACH

FORMALISM A type of literary theory and analysis, originated in Moscow and St. Petersburg (Russia) in the second decade of the 20th century Leading representatives of the movement: Boris Eichenbaum, Viktor Schlovsky, and Roman Jakobson

FORMALISM (CONTD.) Center of the Formalist study of literature moved to Czechoslovakia in 1930s and the Prague Linguistic Circle continued with it Prague Linguistic Circle included— Roman Jakobson (emigrated from Russia), Jan Mukarovsky, and Rene Wellek (American- Czeck critic)

LITERATURE ACCORDIND TO THE FORMALIST APPROACH A specialized use of language Fundamental opposition between the literary or poetical use of language and the ordinary, ‘practical’ use of language…. Literary language is self-focused, its function is to offer the reader a special mode of experience by drawing attention to its own ‘formal’ features, i.e., to the qualities and internal relations of the linguistic signs themselves.

Roman Jakobson wrote in 1921: “ The object of study in literary science is not literature but ‘literariness’, that is, what makes a given work a literary work.” (Linguistics in Modern Criticism) Jan Mukarovsky described in the 1920s: “ The literariness of a work consists in the maximum of foregrounding of the utterance,” that is, the foregrounding of “the act of expression, the act of speech itself.”

CONTRIBUTION OF THE FORMALISTS TO THE THEORY OF PROSE FICTION Distinction between the ‘story’ (the simple enumeration of a chronological sequence of events) and a plot Transformation of the raw material of a story into a literary plot by the use of a variety of devices that violate sequence and that deform and defamiliarize the story elements….

… the effect is to foreground the narrative medium and devices themselves, and in this way to disrupt and refresh what had been our standard responses to the subject- matter.

FROM EUROPEAN FORMALISM TO THE AMERICAN NEW CRITICISM Although developed independently, American New Criticism sometimes called ‘formalist’ because of its stress on the analysis of the literary work as a self-sufficient verbal entity, constituted by internal relations and independent of reference either to the state of mind of the author or to the actualities of the “external” world.

It conceives poetry as a special mode of language whose distinctive features are defined in terms of their systematic opposition to practical or scientific language. However, the New critics did not apply the science of linguistics to poetry, their emphasis was on a complex interplay within a work of ironic, paradoxical and metaphoric meanings around a humanly important ‘theme’.

Main influence of Russian and Czech formalism on American criticism has been on the development of stylistics and of narratology. Roman Jakobson and Tzvetan Todorov were influential in introducing formalist concepts and methods into French Structuralism.

WEAKNESSES OF FORMALISM Marxist critics viewed the Formalism in its European and American varieties as the product of a reactionary ideology. The proponents of reader-response criticism, speech-act theory, and new historicism view that there is a sharp and definable division between ordinary language and literary language.

BACK TO FORMALISM IN THE 1990s Frank Lentricchia renounces his earlier writings and teachings “about literature as a political instrument”, in favour of the view “that literature is pleasurable and important, as literature and not as an illustration of something else.” Harold Bloom also advocates reading literature not to apply or confirm a political or social theory but for the love of literature.

NEW FORMALISM A renewed interest in metrics and in aesthetics proposed primarily as a reaction against the new historicism. There is a connection between the formal aspects of literature and the historical, political, and the worldly concerns.

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