Literary
Criticism
Class #5
•Russian Formalism
History
• 1915 The Moscow Linguistic
Circle founded
• 1916 The Petrograd “Society for
the Study of Poetic Language”
(Opojaz) founded
History
• 1929-1930 censured by Stalin for “undue
preoccupation with ‘mere’ form, bourgeois
‘escapism,’ and like offenses.” (Note, the term
"formalist" was initially applied pejoratively.)
• 1930s The Prague Linguistic Circle (René Wellek,
Roman Jakobson)
• 1960s Influenced Anglo-American New Criticism
and French Structuralism.
Boris Eichenbaum
• 1886-1959
• “The Formal Method,” 1926
(1) The desire for a science or ‘poetics’
of literature
• “The so-called ‘formal method’
grew out of a struggle for a
science of literature that would
be both independent and
factual . . .” (Norton 1062).
(2) “Literariness” as primary object
of study
• “Literariness”: what makes a given
work a literary work; what
distinguishes literary study from
other disciplines, such as
psychology, politics, and
philosophy. (Eichenbaum 7)
(2) “Literariness” as primary object
of study (continued)
• The Formalists read literary texts
in order to discover their
“literariness”—to highlight the
devices and technical elements
introduced by writers in order to
make language literary. (Selden 38)
(3) The autonomy of form
• Roman Jakobson (1896-1982)
• Distinguished between “poetic” language and
“practical” language
– Practical language: Language resources (sounds,
morphological segment, and so forth) are merely a
means of communication.
– Poetic language: language resources have automatic
value. ((Eichenbaum 7-8).
• Identified literature as a verbal art; focused on the
description of certain “dominant” linguistic forms.
(4) Form aims to defamiliarize.
• Victor Shklovsky (1893-1984)
• “Art as Technique” (1916)
• Defamiliarization: or “make it strange”.
“Art is conceived as a way of breaking
down automatism in perception”
((Eichenbaum 10).
(5) The palpableness of form
• Focuses on “motivation,” or the
functional role of literary devices.
• Tends to highlight “art which is not
fully motivated or which deliberately
tears away motivation,” namely, laying
bare its device, such as Laurence
Sterne’s Tristram Shandy. It’s a
moment of the narrative self reflexiveness (Eichenbaum 11-12).
Baring the device: Example 1
• Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy
• “Sterne mocks the artificial formula of the
picaresque novel which tries to trace the picaro’s
life ‘from birth to death’. He highlights this
convention by exaggeration: we start with the
precise moment of Tristram’s conception—his
father’s interrupted ejaculation!” (Selden 38)
• “Sterne parodies the novel’s usual sequential
pattern of chapters and preliminaries by
transposing chapters, leaving one blank (to be
filled in by the reader), and placing dedication and
preface in the middle of the book.” (Selden 38)
Baring the device: Example 2 (1)
• Jorge Luis Borges’ “Averroes’ Search”
• “Borges recounts the story of Averroes, the Arab
philosopher living in Spain in the second half of the twelfth
century. . . . Borges poses the question of why Averroes,
who had dedicated his life to understanding the work of
Aristotle, had so badly misunderstood the concept of
tragedy treated by the Greek philosopher. To answer this
question, Borges . . . employs the faculty of historical
imagination in order to think himself back into Averroes's
particular time period and cultural context.” (Jon Stewart,
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/philosophy_and_literature/v019/19.2stewart.html )
• The process of writing the story is meant to parallel the
events in the story itself; Borges' attempt to understand
Averroës is as futile as Averroës' attempt to understand
plays. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Averroes's_Search )
Baring the device: Example 2 (2)
• Jorge Luis Borges’ “Averroes’ Search”
• A moment of the narrative self –
reflexiveness: at the end the story the
narrator states, "I felt that the work was
mocking me. I felt that Averroes, wanting to
imagine what a drama is without ever
having suspected what a theater is, was no
more absurd than I, wanting to imagine
Averroes yet with no other sources than a
few fragments from Renan, Lane, and Asin
Palacios.” (155)
(6) Plot (sjuzet) vs. Story (fabula)
• Story: chronological events;
marked by real-life motivations
• Plot: the artistic arrangement of
events. An artist often “holds back
the action of a novel . . . by
transposing the order of the parts”
(Eichenbaum 12).
(7) the "dialogic" nature of Formalism
itself
• In his defense of the primacy of form,
Shklovsky explained that "a new form
appears not in order to express a new
content, but in order to replace an old
form, which has already lost its artistic
value."
•
(Norton 1040) and
http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/hopkins_guide_to_literary_theory/russian_formalism.ht
ml
(8) Literary Evolution
• Literary history = an evolutionary accretion
of innovative devices (Norton 1060)
• Eikhenbaum concluded that "when we have
a theory that explains everything, a readymade theory explaining all past and future
events and therefore needing neither
evolution nor anything like it--then we must
recognize that the formal method has come
to an end" (Norton 1087).
Preferences:
• Inventiveness
• Aesthetic sophistication
• A search for new modes of
expression
(Erlich 1101)
Group Activity
• Identify the “literariness” of
the following poems. (Do so
by observing how the poet
“make it strange” for you.)
在我是我
夢是在不
的在那知
輕夢一道
波中個風
裏，方
依 向
洄 吹
。
—
她我是我
的是在不
溫在那知
存夢一道
，中個風
我，方
的 向
迷 吹
醉
。
—
甜我是我
美是在不
是在那知
夢夢一道
裡中個風
的，方
光 向
輝 吹
。
—
她我是我
的是在不
負在那知
心夢一道
，中個風
我，方
的 向
傷 吹
悲
。
—
在我是我
夢是在不
的在那知
悲夢一道
哀中個風
裏，方
心 向
碎 吹
。
—
—
黯我是我
淡是在不
是在那知
夢夢一道
裡中個風
的，方
光 向
輝 吹
。
我
不
知
道
風
是
在
哪
一
個
方
向
徐吹
志
摩
車站留言
陳克華
阿美阿草
我先搭11:37的南下了 我並不恨你
如果颱風明天到達
來電：(00)7127ㄓ998ψ
父留。孩子記得我
先生下再說
錢，不要等我了
我家不在台北，Echo：ECHO
欠你的
工作已找著
很久很久以後，本質
和現象衝突 得很厲害
祝快回家
三隻母雞和甘藍菜
都好你最真誠的愛匆此
再還你。
(孟樊 〈當代新詩理論〉
頁二五七)
•
•
(
)
創
世
紀
詩
選
頁
三
五
七
我剪慢個母 下句都夠「為母
，開慢我親 去話夠做媽什親
︰，地，仍 。也，。，麼只
︰再哭然按 不難」七不買
︰用，後照 回道母尺敢回
使針啊用舊 答你親是自了
我線！剪尺 ，長說不己七
成縫把刀碼 使高：夠去尺
人我我慢在 母了「的買布
。，剪慢布 親嗎以，。，
補破地上 自？前要我我
，剪畫 覺」做八說論
把，了 矮我七尺：的
我我一 了一尺才 很
，
七
尺
布
蘇
紹
連
然 然
而 而
海 海
以
及
波
的
羅
列
防 外 防
風 邊 風
林
林
還
的 有 的
風
景
(
以
及
波
的
羅
列
外 防 外
邊 風 邊
林
還
還
有 的 有
(
林
亨
泰
)
創
世
紀
詩
選
頁
二
六
其
二
)
A Martian Sends a Postcard Home
Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings—
and some are treasured for their markings—
they cause the eyes to melt
or the body to shriek without pain.
I have never seen one fly, but
sometimes they perch on the hand.
Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
and rests its soft machine on ground:
then the world is dim and bookish
like engraving under tissue paper.
Craig Raine
Rain is where the earth is television.
It has the property of making colours darker.
Model T is a room with the lock insice –
a key is turned to free the world
for movement, so quick there is a film
to watch for anything missed.
But time is tied to the wrist
or kept in a box, ticking with impatience.
In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps,
that snores when you pick it up.
If the ghost cries, they carry it
to their lips and soothe it to sleep
with sounds. And yet, they wake it up
deliberately, by tickling with a finger.
Only the young are allowed to suffer
openly. Adults go to a punishment room
with water but nothing to eat.
The lock the door and suffer the noises
alone. No one is exempt
and everyone’s pain has a different smell.
At night, when all the colours die,
they hide in pairs
and read about themselves—
in colour, with their eyelids shut.
(Sheldon 42-43)
Food for Thought
• 1. The Formalists believe that
literary study is exclusively about
form and technique. Give reasons
to support or refute this position.
• 2. Compare and contrast Russian
Formalism with Structuralism.
Critique
Various individuals and groups advocating
or at least incorporating a Marxist
perspective on literature, including
members of the "sociological school" as
well as the Bakhtin school in the 1920s,
attacked the Formalists for neglecting the
social and ideological discourses impinging
upon the structure and function of the poetic
work.
•
http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/hopkins_guide_to_literary_theory/russian_formalism.ht
ml
References:
• Erlich, Victor. “Russian Formalism.” The New Princeton
Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Eds. Alex Preminger
and T.V.F. Brogan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1993.
1101-1102.
• Leitch, Vincent B, ed. The Norton Anthology of Theory and
Criticism. 2001.
• McCauley, Karen A.
http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/hopkins_guide_to_literary
_theory/russian_formalism.html
• Selden, Raman. Practicing Theory and Reading Literature.
Longman, 1989.