Russian Formalism & New Criticism Flashcards
What were the 2 groups that came together to form Russian Formalism?
Who are its celebrated practitioners?
The Moscow Linguistic Circle → appeared in 1915 in Moscow/
Mukařovský & Jacobson
The Society for the Study of Poetic Language (OPOJAZ) → in 1916 Petersburg
/ Schklovsky
What were the 2 groups that came together to form Russian Formalism?
Who are its celebrated practitioners?
The Moscow Linguistic Circle → appeared in 1915 in Moscow/
Mukařovský & Jacobson
The Society for the Study of Poetic Language (OPOJAZ) → in 1916 Petersburg
/ Schklovsky
What were the common core ideas of these 2 groups?
Anti-traditional Approach /Foregrounding the text itself /Autonomy of the text / Scientific Analysis
What do we mean by anti-traditional?
not in the habit of studying a piece of poetry either in the
light of the poet or the author OR in the light of the way it was received by the
reader (they excluded extrinsic factors) but they viewed the text as the primary source of meaning and criticism
What did they mean by Autonomy of the text?
self-sufficiency of the text → to study a text, you shouldn’t
go to the author & his background. Just the text itself should be read & studied
How did they have a scientific outlook?
literature is self-enclosed & rule-governed.
Self-enclosed
to study a literary work, you don’t necessarily have to go through
any other field of study. Sometimes it may help but generally everything starts
with the text itself.
Rule-governed: there are some rules that act in different poems – no matter
where – that were applicable.
This view helped them treat literature as a science
What the principles of their scientific outlook?
They wanted to dig out the structural, linguistic, and features. Compositional elements and literary devices.
The subject of study is “literariness”(introduced by Jakobson) –> The language of literature is different from ordinary life it draws attention to itself.
What does literariness create in poetry?
defamiliarization or estrangement.
Defamiliarization = making the old see new, or the process of making the familiar
seem strange (Introduced by Shklovsky)
They believed that what should happen in the realm of literature is to refresh this
process of the perception of the external world.
What are the 2 terms that have been invented by Schklovsky to talk about the structure of
prose fiction in the light of Russian Formalism? (Realm of narration)
- Fabula (story) → the raw material of the story / the outline / the
chronological series of the events of a story - Syuzhet (plot) → the literary devices that are added to that original raw
material in order to transform it into s.th artistic.
