Russian formalism

Russian Formalism

Russian Formalism is a movement of literary criticism and interpretation that emerged in Russia during the second decade of the twentieth century and remained prompt until about 1930. It concentrated on analyzing the internal structure of literary texts and involved detailed inquiry into plot structure, narrative perspective, typic imagery, and other literary proficiencys. In other words, it stressed the grandness of form and technique over content.

This movement began in 1915-1916 with the cosmos of the Moscow Linguistic Circle and the Petersburg Society for the Study of poetical Language (OPOJAZ). The most influential figure of the Moscow radical was Roman Jakobson, while the most influential of Petersburg group was superscript Shklovsky.

In reaction to other approaches of criticism which concentrate on the family mingled with the literary work and the cultural and sociological condition it is supposed to reflect, the Formalists approached literature as a separate brass looking at the literary work as universe isolated from the political, sociological, and economical conditions of the time. From this point emerged certain dominant principles:

* point on defining the literariness of the literary work: This attitude was verbalized by Roman Jakobson in 1921 when he said: the heading of the science of literature is not literature, but literariness -that is, that which makes a addicted work a work of literature .

Initially the Formalists emphasized the differences between literary language and non-literary language. They developed the concept of defamiliarization. This concept is curiously associated with Shklovsky who stated in his 1917 Art as Technique that: the technique of art is to make objects unfamiliar, to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and aloofness of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. Art is a way of experiencing the perverted of an...

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