Russian Formalism emerged in the early 20th century as a reaction against previous historical, biographical, and psychological approaches to literary study. It emphasized close analysis of the formal literary elements and devices within a text over external concerns. Major Russian Formalist theorists included Victor Shklovsky, Boris Eichenbaum, and Roman Jakobson. They viewed literature as a system made up of autonomous components that make familiar things strange through defamiliarization. By the late 1920s, Russian Formalism declined due to outside pressure and doubts about its purely formal approach.

1. FORMALISM
By: Muhammad
Ibrahim Khalil
M.Phil. NUML
University
Islamabad

2. HISTORICAL PROSPECTS
• Russian Formalism- a school in Russian literary scholarship
• Originated in Russia in the second decade of 20th C
• New Criticism emerged in UK and USA during these same times
• Before Formalism, two trends were more dominant.
1. Historical and Biographical approach
2. Psychological Approach
• Formalism- a reaction against all dominant intellectual trends

3. LEADING THEORISTS
• Began in two groups
1. OPOYAZ- Founded in 1916 and led by Shklovsky
2. Moscow Linguistic Circle- Formed in 1915
• Leading proponents
1. Boris Eichenbaum
2. Roman Jakobson
3. Victor Shklovsky
4. Boris Tomashevsky

4. MAJOR TENETS OF FORMALISM
• Doctrines of Russian Formalism
1. Emphasis on literary work and its component parts
• Eichenbaum states, ‘the literary scholar ought to be concerned solely with the
inquiry into the distinguishing features of the literary material’ (1924, p.3).
2. Insistence on the autonomy of literary scholarship
• No value given to intuition, imagination or author’s psyche
• Jakobson says, ‘ the subject of literary scholarship is NOT literature in its
totality but literariness’ (1921, p.11)

5. MAIN CHARACTERISTICS
• Art as a device of defamiliarization
Shklovsky states, “literature has the ability to make us see the world anew, to
make that which has become familiar, strange again” (1923, p.16).
• Conscious use of tropes to defamiliarize what is known.
• A text is the sum total of devices.
According to Shklovsky, poetry is “a dance of articulatory organs” (1923).

6. CONTINUED
• Jakobson discussed main functions of language.
1. Language is not mere a means of communication but it has interpersonal functions. He
insisted on the difference between ‘poetic discourse’ and communicative language.
2. Word/ Verbal sign becomes an autonomous source of pleasure. Multiple devices
converge upon the word and dramatize its complex texture.
• Poetry is a unique mode of discourse due to ‘multiplicity of meaning’.
• Eichenbaum wrote, “the aim of poetry is to make perceptible the texture of the word in
all its aspects” (1924, p.24)

7. WHY RUSSIAN FORMALISM ENDED?
• It ended towards the end of 1920s.
• Due to outside pressure and genuine doubts about their position caused some formalist
spokesman to revise their initial claims.
• Later formalists pursued a middle ground between formalist and sociological
approaches to literature.
• Undue preoccupation with ‘mere’ form.

8. REFERENCES
Al-Hujelan, N. (2004). Formalism and Early Structuralism. Retrieved April 25, 2020
from https://www.britannica.com/art/Formalism-literary-criticism
Erlich, V. (1973). Russian Formalism. Journal of the History of Ideas, 34.