A lecture on formalism

1. WELCOME FORMALISM

2. BACKGROUND
 Eliot called the theory as lemon squeeze
method
Aesthetic rather than political movement
Started around 1910
A new beginning in literary theory- first
practical criticism
A short lived trend

3. How meaning is derived from any art of
work
Meaning
Textual Contextual

4. WHAT IS FORMALISM?
It came from the word form
Look at the formal devices
Formal devices include rhythm, metre, rhyme,
syntax, metaphor, metonymy etc.
Take out meaning from this formal devices
Started in Russia around 1910 flourished till
1920

5. Formalism
Moscow Linguistic Circle Prague
Linguistic Circle
(Roman Jakobson) (Viktor
Shklovsky)

6. DEFINITION
“An aesthetic tendency characterized by
the separation of form and content of art
and literature in which the predominant
significance is given to formal aspects”- M
H Abrams

7. PRECURSORS OF FORMALISM
E.Hanslick –movement of musicology
Heinrich Wolfflin –art criticism(painting)
Oscar Walzel- distinguished between
form and content

8. WHY FORMALISM
Reaction against romanticism of 19th
century
Reaction against the USSR rule in Russia
Reaction against Marxist ideology

9. RUSSIAN FORMALISM
Moscow Linguist Circle
1914
Roman Jakobson & Petr Bogatyrev- primary
proponents
OPOJAZ(Obshchestro Izucheniia Poeticheskogo
Yazyka)
1916
Boris Eichenbaum, Viktor Shklovsky & Yury Tynynav

10. INITIAL THOUGHT IN THE THEORY
Vladimir Mayakovsky
Creation through experiments which will result
in a form that contains semantic meaning of the
resulting work
European symbolists
“Art is Free, Life is paralyzed”
Friedrich Nietzsche Henry Bergson

11. BORIS EICHENBAUM
A science of literature which is independent
and factual
Literature is made of language , so linguistics
is the base
Literature is autonomous
It has its own history of innovations
It is not possible to separate content and form
–all are one

12. THANK YOU