Formalism refers to a style of inquiry that focuses on features of the literary text itself

Teresa Krzysica gr 1 filologia angielska Wyższa Szkoła Humanitas w Sosnowcu Formalism refers to a style of inquiry that focuses on features of the literary text itself, to the exclusion of biographical, historical and intellectual contexts. The word Formalism derives from one of the central tenets of Formalism thought: that the form of a work of literature is inherently a part of its content and that the attempt to separate the two is not correct. This literary theory believed in the possibility to trace the evolution and development of literary forms, and thus literature itself. Formalism as a school of literary criticism have mainly to do with structural purposes of a particular text, reducing the importance of text’s historical, biographical and cultural context. ( 1, 2) Formalism was the prevailing mode of academic literary study in the United States and United Kingdom (Anglo-American New Criticism) from the end of the Second World War through the 1970s, particularly the Formalism of the New Critics. On the European continent, Formalism revealed primarily out of the Slavic intellectual school of Prague and Moscow and especially out of the work of Roman Jakobson, Boris Eichenbaum and Viktor Shklowsky. Russian Formalism and New Criticism are similar in a number of respects but developed in isolation from one another and should not be examined identical. Formalism rose to relative importance as a reaction against Romanticist theories of literature, which focused on the artist and individual creative genius, and instead centered the text itself back into the spotlight, to show how the text was indebted to forms and other works that had preceded it. ( 1, 2 ) Russian Formalism had two centers: the Moscow Linguistic Circle founded in 1915 by Roman Jakobson, Peter Bogatyrev, Grigori Vinokur and the Petrograd OPOYAZ acronym for the Society for the Study of Poetic Language formed in 1916 by Boris Eichenbaum, Viktor Shklovsky and Yury Tynyanov. The two groups maintained close contact. Moscow Linguistic Circle was composed mainly of linguistics who were developing new approaches to the study of language and regarded poetics as part of a broader discipline of linguistics. They were having their attention completely taken up by the question of differences between poetic and practical language. The members of OPOYAZ were particularly historians who viewed literature as a unique form of verbal art that had to be studied on its own without relying on linguistics.

Moscow Linguistic Circle and OPOYAZ were united to place the study of

literature on the scientific footing by defining its object and establishing its own methods and

procedures. Second, they undermined the theory that art is the reflection of reality by insisting that it is a unique aesthetic entity governed by its own internal laws. (3,4 ). In the 1917 Shklovsky published Art as Device outlining the theory of ostranenie ( defamiliarisation based on the opposition between a habitual response and the new perceiving between, a mechanical recognition and a new awareness of things. The goal of art is to disrupt that automatic perception and to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. Art operates through the device of defamiliarization that makes objects unfamiliar and strange and increase the difficulty of perception because the process of perception is aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. Shklovsky argued that we can never retain the freshness of our perception of objects. The demands of normal existence require that they must become to a great extent automatized. The Formalists were not so much interested in the perceptions themselves as in the nature of the devices which produce the effect of defamiliarization (3,4,5). Shlovsky in his pioneering study Art as Device makes this clear: The technique of art is to make objects unfamiliar, to make forms difficult, to increase 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 experience the artfulness of an object; the object is not important (4,5) In place of content and form the formalism critics proposed the concepts of material and device corresponding to the preaesthetic and aesthetic. Material was understood as the raw stuff of literature that a writer can use for his work, facts from everyday life, literary conventions and ideas. Device was as an aesthetic principle that transforms material into a work of art. Shlkovsky argued that art has its own organization which transforms its material in something artistically experienced. It is expressed in rhythm, phonetics, the syntax and the plot of the work. (4) The formalists distinguished two aspects of the narrative: fabula (story) and siuzhet (plot). Story was a series of events linked together according to their temporal succession and their causality. Plot was the artistic rearrangement of the events in the text, in a different chronological order and without casual dependency. The plot included all other casual elements of artistic structure such as digressions and comments. The formalists turned their attention to the study of devices which embody the internal laws of plot composition.

Shklovsky isolated some typical categories of plot compositions such as the staircase, the hook-like construction and double plotting. These constructions splinter even apparently unified non- aesthetic material, distort and alter it, making it artistically noticed. In some texts the devices is laid bare, making the reader aware of their presence for example Laurence Sterne’s novel Tristam Shandy with its continuous interruptions of the action, authorial digressions, displacement of chronology, transposition of chapters and retardation. Shklovsky believed that writer should play with the expectations of the reader and carefully destroy illusion of reality. (3) Eichenbaum investigated the role of narrative voice as the organizing principle of fiction. He argued that in some literary works the focus is not on the plot and the interlocking of motifs but on the voice of narrator, forcing his way into the foreground by any means possible. This kind of narration is named as skaz and described it as a special type of discourse oriented in its lexicon, syntax and intonation toward the oral speech of the narrator. There are narrating skaz relaying on verbal jokes and semantics puns; and the reproducing skaz with elements of mimicry and gestures and special comic articulation. The best example of narrating skaz was Nicolai Leskov who created special type of narration with colloquial idioms, folk etymology and semantic puns. The best illustration of reproducing skaz was Nicolai Gogol with his system of various mimical – articulatory gestures, creating a comical effect and pathetic declamation conceived of as a contrasting aesthetic effect. ( 3) Tomashevsky called the smallest unit of plot a motif and further he makes distinction between bound motif which is required by the story and free motif which is inessential from the point of view, functioning as a the focus of art. This approach reverse the traditional subordination of formal devices to content. The Formalists rather perversely seem to regard a poem’s ideas and themes as merely the external excuse the writer required to justify the use of formal devices. The Formalists called this dependence on external, non- literary assumptions motivation. The most familiar type of motivation is realism. We expect literature to be life like and may be irritated by characters or descriptions which fail to much our common- sense expectations of what the real world is like. Tomashevsky pointed out we become accustomed to all kinds of absurdities and improbabilities once we learn to accept a new set of conventions. The theme of motivation turned out to be important in a great deal of subsequent literary theory. We refuse to allow a text to remain alien our frames of reference and we insist on naturalizing it. The Formalists anticipated structuralist and post- thought by attending to those features of texts which resist the relentless process of naturalization. Shklovsky refused

to reduce the unusual disorder of Tristram Shandy to an expression of Tristram’s quirky mind and drew attention to the novel’s insistent literariness which checks naturalization. (4 ) Instead of having to talk about literature defamiliarising reality, Formalists could begin to refer to the defamiliarising of literature itself. Elements within a work may become automatised or may have a positive aesthetic function. The same device may have different aesthetic functions in different works or maybe totally automatised. Literary works are seen as dynamic systems in which elements are structured in relations of foreground and background. Jakobson regarded the dominant as an important late Formalist concept and called it as: the focusing component of a work of art: it rules, determines and transforms the remaining components. The very notion of defamiliarisation suggested change and historical development. The Formalists were arranged to see the history of literature as one of permanent revolution. Poetic forms develop as a result of a shifting dominant : there is a continuing shift in the mutual relationships among the various elements in a poetic system. But whatever the dominant may be, it organizes the other elements in the individual work, demoting to the background of aesthetic attention elements which in works of earlier periods might have been foreground as dominant. What changes is not so much syntax, rhythm, plot, diction, etc but the function of particular elements or groups of elements. The shifting dominant operates not only within particular texts but within particular literary periods. (4) There was a close link between Russian formalism and the Prague School which accepted the insistence on the autonomy of literary studies, the importance of dichotomy between poetic and practical language and the reliance on linguistic model. Russian formalism strongly influenced the development of the Polish integral school in the 1930s that accepted the autonomy of literary scholarship and advocated an integral approach to literature focusing on the characteristic qualities of literature (3). The Poles were impressed with the formalist notion of poetic language as a differentiating feature of literature stylistics and prosody. The formalists changed literary achievement into a mature and scholarly discipline which replaced impressionistic approach to literature by a rigorous investigation of the intrinsic laws of literature. Formalism defined literature as a form of verbal art and to focus on the analysis of poetic language as the eminent feature of literature. They developed the concepts of literary structure and literary dynamics for further structuralist approach. (3) The major inadequacy of formalism was its demanding on the autonomy of art and its refusal to consider any relationship between literature and other social systems that resulted in

neglecting for the question of creative personality and the connection between literature and reality. Finally its rejection of critical evaluation in literary criticism led to extreme relativism and failure to do justice to the aesthetic quality of literature. (3) References 1. “Formalism” New world encyclopedia. 3 April 2008 2. “Formalism (literature)” 18 May 2011 3. Makaryk, Irene Rima. Encyclopedia of contemporary literary theory. Approaches, Scholars, Terms. University of Toronto Press, 1993. 4. Selden, Raman, Peter Widdiwson and Peter Brooker. A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory. Harlow:Pearson Longman, 2005. 5. Lemon, Lee T., and Marion J. Reis. Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays. Lincoln:U of Nebraska P, 1965.