RUSSIAN FORMALISM

Studies in Theory and Criticism

Contents
a) General overview of the authors of the school tradition
1) Definition
2) Leading Figures & Approaches
b) The main ideas of the school
3) Concepts & Method
4)Essay: ʺLinguistics and poeticsʺ
c)Shaking of other assumptions or beliefs
d) Influences of Russian Formalism
6) other thinkers
7) other literary schools
8) The Bakhtin School
e) The practical literary analysis
9) Russian Formalism at present time
10) Analysing a literary work using Russian Formalism
11) Video
References
Definition
• Russian Formalism is a school of literary
theory and analysis that emerged in Russia
around 1915.

• It includes the work of highly Russian and

Soviet scholars.

• They found the Opayaz (Society for the

Study of Poetic Language). After that they
had to go to Prague and formed the
Moscow Linguistic Circle.
What was the aim?
• It aimed to devise a general ‘science of literature’ by
looking at structures and systematics of literary
forms.
 What did they reject?
• In reaction against previous And • They focused on the form of
literary theories, Russian
literature, rather than its content.
Formalists rejected unsystematic,
subjective and impressionistic
ways of dealing with literature, • They emphasized the difference
inherited from the 19th century between literary language and
and attempted a scientific non-literary practical language
description of literature as a that aims at communicating
special use of language. information.

• Biographical, social, political, or

cultural contexts are not
important in the critical process.
 In other words
• The Russian Formalists pushed back against the
nineteenth-century notion amongst Russian critics
that art was something mysterious, full of
symbolism and poetic parables waiting to be
deciphered.

• This Symbolist trend was brutally undermined by

the Futurists, who saw literature as “a matter of
technology rather than theology,” and with the rise
of Futurism came a need for a new, more scientific
way of literary criticism: Russian Formalism.
It was Censured
• This was not appreciated by Trotsky, who claimed
that “art is always a social servant and historically
utilitarian.”

• Russian Formalists stripped art of its halo, and

thus, according to Trotsky, their methods were
harmful to the political message.
The Leading Figures

• Viktor Shklovsky • Peter Bogatryrev

• Yury Tynyanov • Osip Brik

• Boris Eichenbaum • Boris Tomashevski

• Roman Jakobson • Vladimir Propp

• Jan Mukorovsky
 Victor Shklovsky
Mechanistic Formalism
 Shklovsky was born on 12 January 1893 in St.
Petersburg, Russia.

 He was a Russian and Soviet literary theorist, critic,

writer, and pamphleteer.

 He was educated at the St. Petersburg University in the

Department of Philology.

 In 1916, he founded OPOYAZ which generated the

formalist movement.

 He died on December 8, 1984, in Moscow, Russia.

 Vladimir Propp
Organic Formalism

 Vladimir Propp was born on April 17,

1895 in St. Petersburg to a German family.

 He was a Soviet folklorist and scholar.

 He attended St. Petersburg University (1913–1918)

majoring in Russian and German philology.

 He analyzed the basic plot components of Russian folk

tales to identify their simplest irreducible narrative
elements.

 He became a member of Leningrad University and

remained a faculty member until his death in 1970.
 Yury Tynyanov
Systemic Formalism
 Yury was born onOctober 18, 1894.

 He was a famous Soviet/Russian writer, literary critic,

translator, scholar and screenwriter. He was an authority
on Pushkin.

 Hewas awarded a position at Saint Petersburg University,

where he entered the department of Slavic languages and
literature.

 His first works made their appearance in print in 1921.

 H e published a famous work titled Theses on Language with
the linguist Roman Jakobson.

 He died on December 20, 1943.

 Roman Jakobson
Lingusitic Formalism
 Jakobson was one of the greatest linguists
of the 20th century.

 He was born on October 11, 1896.

 He was Russian American linguist and literary theorist.

 He was one of the leaders of the influential Prague Linguistic

Circle.

 He helped to bridge the gap between European and American

linguistics.

 His famous model of the functions of language is part of the

intellectual heritage of semiotics.
 Linguistic Approach
• The adherents of this model placed poetic language
at the center of their inquiry.

• As Warner remarks, "Jakobson makes it clear that

he rejects completely any notion of emotion as the
touchstone of literature."
 Linguistic Approach
• The theoreticians of OPOJAZ distinguished between
practical and poetic language.

• Practical language is used in day-to-day communication

to convey information.
 Linguistic Approach
• According to Lev Jakubinsky, "the practical goal
retreats into background and linguistic combinations
acquire a value in themselves."

• When this happens language becomes de-familiarized

and utterances become poetic. (Steiner, "Russian
Formalism" 22).
Concepts & Methods
Defamiliarization
• Instead of seeing literature as a 'reflection'
of the world, Victor Shklovsky and his
Formalist followers saw it as a linguistic
dislocation.

• The word “defamiliarization” was

reproduced from the word ostranenie
meaning “making strange”. Shklovsky
mentions about how art makes objects
unfamiliar.
 Literariness
• According to formalism, the background of literature do not
belong to literary scholarship.

• The proper subject matter of the discipline is not even literature

itself but a phenomenon that Jakobson called literaturnost'
(literariness).

• He declared that it is literariness that makes a given work a

literary work.

• In other words, literariness is a feature that distinguishes

literature from other human creations and is made of certain
artistic techniques, or devices.

• These devices became the primary object of the formalists'

analyses.
 Plot-Story distinction

• Shklovsky distinguishes story (fabula) from plot

(syuzhet).

• He indicates that "Great literature tries to move away

from storyline to plot."

• Story is a series of events connected by time, place,

character and cause and effect. But plot is the way
the author tells and arranges the story and creates the
structure.
Essay
ʺLinguistics and poeticsʺ by Roman Jakobson
Examples

• Caesar ‘s famous word • ‘Horrible Harry’

‘Veni,vidi,Vici’
 Influnce of Russian Formalism on
other thinkers

Russian formalism exerted a major influence on

thinkers such as
 Mikhail Bakhtin

 Yuri Lotman
 Influnce Of Russian Formalism on other
literary School

• Structuralism

• Anglo-American New Criticism

• Practical Criticism

• The Bakhtin School

The Bakhtin School

• Bakhtin School arose in the later period of formalism.

• It was a 20th century school of Russian thought which

centered on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin and other thinkers.

• Their work focused on the centrality of questions of

significance in social life in general and artistic creation.

• They were concerned with language or discourse as a social

phenomenon.
The practical literary analysis of Russian
Formalism
• The Formalists’ most widespread impact was on
the incipient discipline of NARRATOLOGY,
fabula versus sujet.

• The pioneering, challenging, and even

revolutionary contribution of the Russian
Formalists to twentieth-century literary theory is
universally acknowledged.

• Their work is often viewed as the first modern

attempt at systematic, comprehensive, and
scientifically oriented literary theorizing.
 Today the analytical methods of the Russian Formalists
still have influence on;

• Literary Theories-Structuralism, • Cinema

New Criticism
• Language
• Poetry
• Narratology
• Prose Fiction
• Art
Example
• Mandelker evaluates Russian Formalist
Studies in the article ʺRussian Formalism and
The Objective Analysis of Sound in Poetry.ʺ

• ʺThe Russian Formalists initiated a method for

the quantitative examination of the lingusitic
structure of literary text.ʺ

• ʺTheir approach is a synthesis of strong

traditions in both the philosophy of language
and in poetics.ʺ
Example
• Classical formalist theories impacted upon contemporary
filmmaking.

• The Formalist’s contribution to narrative theory fabula

and syuzhet can be considered one of the important
principles in contemporary narrative analysis.

• A Wedding in the Family (2000)-Documentation by Paul

Watson (It explores the institution of marriage in
contemporary society through interviews with the
respective bride and grooms wider family.)

• We see that Watson employs a complex syuzhet pattern to

deliberately disrupt the flow of the fabula.
For Literary Analysis
• In literature, we can analyze a text by using the consept of
defamiliarization.

• For instance, it is easy to see in a text such as Finnegan's Wake

by James Joyce whose second sentence reads:

• Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea, had

passencore rearrived from North Armorica on this side the
scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate
war: nor had topsawyer's rocks by the stream Oconee
exaggerated themselse to Laurens County's gorgios while
they went doublin their mumper all the time: nor avoice from
afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick: not
yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland
old isaac: not yet, though all's fair in vanessy, were sosie
sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe."
• Joyce invents new devices and combines
devices in new ways.

• From this perspective, defamiliarization has

its effect on the computational linguist who is
developing the algorithms.
 For Literary Analysis
• Sterne applied the concept of
defamiliarization to Tristram Shandy.

• The story of the novel, which is the day-by-

day progression of Tristram's life, is pretty
simple. But the plot is crazy complicated.
That's mainly because Tristram, the narrator of
the novel, loves not sticking to the point.

• It demonstrates so clearly the distinction

between "story" and "plot."
 References
• Mandelker, Amy. “Russian Formalism and the Objective
Analysis of Sound in Poetry”. The Slavic and East European
Journal 27.3 (1983): 327–338. Web.

• Selden, Raman, et al. A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary

Literary Thory. UK: Pearson, 2005. Print

• Shklovsky, Viktor. “Art as Technique.” Russian Formalist

Criticism: Four Essays. Ed. Ed. Lee T. Lemon and Marion J.
Reiss. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1965. 3-24.
 Prepared by

Esma Biroglu

Seren Arslan

HUseyin YIldIrIm