The document provides an overview of Russian Formalism, a literary theory that emerged in Russia in the early 20th century. It discusses the main figures and ideas of the movement, which rejected impressionistic criticism and aimed to develop a scientific study of literature. Key concepts included defamiliarization, distinguishing between the story and plot of a work, and the idea that literary language differs from practical language. Russian Formalism influenced later schools like Structuralism and focused on analyzing the form rather than content of literature.

1. RUSSIAN FORMALISM
Studies in Theory and Criticism

2. Contents
a) General overview of the authors of the school tradition
1) Definition
2) Leading Figures & Approaches
b) The main ideas of the school
3) Concepts & Method
4)Essay: ʺLinguistics and poeticsʺ
c)Shaking of other assumptions or beliefs
d) Influences of Russian Formalism
6) other thinkers
7) other literary schools
8) The Bakhtin School
e) The practical literary analysis
9) Russian Formalism at present time
10) Analysing a literary work using Russian Formalism
11) Video
References

3. Definition
• Russian Formalism is a school of literary
theory and analysis that emerged in Russia
around 1915.
• It includes the work of highly Russian and
Soviet scholars.
• They found the Opayaz (Society for the
Study of Poetic Language). After that they
had to go to Prague and formed the
Moscow Linguistic Circle.

4. What was the aim?
• It aimed to devise a general ‘science of literature’ by
looking at structures and systematics of literary
forms.

5. What did they reject?
• In reaction against previous
literary theories, Russian
Formalists rejected unsystematic,
subjective and impressionistic
ways of dealing with literature,
inherited from the 19th century
and attempted a scientific
description of literature as a
special use of language.
• Biographical, social, political, or
cultural contexts are not
important in the critical process.
And • They focused on the form of
literature, rather than its content.
• They emphasized the difference
between literary language and
non-literary practical language
that aims at communicating
information.

6. In other words
• The Russian Formalists pushed back against the
nineteenth-century notion amongst Russian critics
that art was something mysterious, full of
symbolism and poetic parables waiting to be
deciphered.
• This Symbolist trend was brutally undermined by
the Futurists, who saw literature as “a matter of
technology rather than theology,” and with the rise
of Futurism came a need for a new, more scientific
way of literary criticism: Russian Formalism.

7. It was Censured
• This was not appreciated by Trotsky, who claimed
that “art is always a social servant and historically
utilitarian.”
• Russian Formalists stripped art of its halo, and
thus, according to Trotsky, their methods were
harmful to the political message.

8. The Leading Figures
• Viktor Shklovsky
• Yury Tynyanov
• Boris Eichenbaum
• Roman Jakobson
• Jan Mukorovsky
• Peter Bogatryrev
• Osip Brik
• Boris Tomashevski
• Vladimir Propp

9. Victor Shklovsky
Mechanistic Formalism
 Shklovsky was born on 12 January 1893 in St.
Petersburg, Russia.
 He was a Russian and Soviet literary theorist, critic,
writer, and pamphleteer.
 He was educated at the St. Petersburg University in the
Department of Philology.
 In 1916, he founded OPOYAZ which generated the
formalist movement.
 He died on December 8, 1984, in Moscow, Russia.

10. Vladimir Propp
Organic Formalism
 Vladimir Propp was born on April 17,
1895 in St. Petersburg to a German family.
 He was a Soviet folklorist and scholar.
 He attended St. Petersburg University (1913–1918)
majoring in Russian and German philology.
 He analyzed the basic plot components of Russian
folk tales to identify their simplest irreducible
narrative elements.
 He became a member of Leningrad University and
remained a faculty member until his death in 1970.

11. Yury Tynyanov
Systemic Formalism
 Yury was born onOctober 18, 1894.
 He was a famous Soviet/Russian writer, literary critic,
translator, scholar and screenwriter. He was an authority
on Pushkin.
 Hewas awarded a position at Saint Petersburg University,
where he entered the department of Slavic languages and
literature.
 His first works made their appearance in print in 1921.
 H e published a famous work titled Theses on Language
with the linguist Roman Jakobson.
 He died on December 20, 1943.

12. Roman Jakobson
Lingusitic Formalism
 Jakobson was one of the greatest linguists
of the 20th century.
 He was born on October 11, 1896.
 He was Russian American linguist and literary theorist.
 He was one of the leaders of the influential Prague
Linguistic Circle.
 He helped to bridge the gap between European and
American linguistics.
 His famous model of the functions of language is part of
the intellectual heritage of semiotics.
 He died on July 18, 1982.

13. Linguistic Approach
• The adherents of this model placed poetic language
at the center of their inquiry.
• As Warner remarks, "Jakobson makes it clear that
he rejects completely any notion of emotion as the
touchstone of literature."

14. Linguistic Approach
• The theoreticians of OPOJAZ distinguished between
practical and poetic language.
• Practical language is used in day-to-day communication
to convey information.

15. Linguistic Approach
• According to Lev Jakubinsky, "the practical goal
retreats into background and linguistic combinations
acquire a value in themselves."
• When this happens language becomes de-familiarized
and utterances become poetic. (Steiner, "Russian
Formalism" 22).

16. Concepts & Methods

17. Defamiliarization
• Instead of seeing literature as a 'reflection'
of the world, Victor Shklovsky and his
Formalist followers saw it as a linguistic
dislocation.
• The word “defamiliarization” was
reproduced from the word ostranenie
meaning “making strange”. Shklovsky
mentions about how art makes objects
unfamiliar.

19. Literariness
• According to formalism, the background of literature do
not belong to literary scholarship.
• The proper subject matter of the discipline is not even
literature itself but a phenomenon that Jakobson called
literaturnost' (literariness).
• He declared that it is literariness that makes a given work
a literary work.
• In other words, literariness is a feature that distinguishes
literature from other human creations and is made of
certain artistic techniques, or devices.
• These devices became the primary object of the
formalists' analyses.

20. Plot-Story distinction
• Shklovsky distinguishes story (fabula) from plot
(syuzhet).
• He indicates that "Great literature tries to move away
from storyline to plot."
• Story is a series of events connected by time, place,
character and cause and effect. But plot is the way
the author tells and arranges the story and creates the
structure.

21. Essay
ʺLinguistics and poeticsʺ by Roman Jakobson

23. Examples
• Caesar ‘s famous word
‘Veni,vidi,Vici’
• ‘Horrible Harry’

24. Russian formalism exerted a major influence on
thinkers such as
 Mikhail Bakhtin
 Yuri Lotman
Influnce of Russian Formalism on
other thinkers

25. • Structuralism
• Anglo-American New Criticism
• Practical Criticism
• The Bakhtin School
Influnce Of Russian Formalism on other
literary School

26. • Bakhtin School arose in the later period of formalism.
• It was a 20th century school of Russian thought which
centered on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin and other thinkers.
• Their work focused on the centrality of questions of
significance in social life in general and artistic creation.
• They were concerned with language or discourse as a social
phenomenon.
The Bakhtin School

27. • The Formalists’ most widespread impact was on
the incipient discipline of NARRATOLOGY,
fabula versus sujet.
• The pioneering, challenging, and even
revolutionary contribution of the Russian
Formalists to twentieth-century literary theory is
universally acknowledged.
• Their work is often viewed as the first modern
attempt at systematic, comprehensive, and
scientifically oriented literary theorizing.

28. • Literary Theories-Structuralism,
New Criticism
• Poetry
• Prose Fiction
• Cinema
• Language
• Narratology
• Art
Today the analytical methods of the Russian Formalists
still have influence on;

29. • Mandelker evaluates Russian Formalist
Studies in the article ʺRussian Formalism and
The Objective Analysis of Sound in Poetry.ʺ
• ʺThe Russian Formalists initiated a method for
the quantitative examination of the lingusitic
structure of literary text.ʺ
• ʺTheir approach is a synthesis of strong
traditions in both the philosophy of language
and in poetics.ʺ
Example

30. • Classical formalist theories impacted upon
contemporary filmmaking.
• The Formalist’s contribution to narrative theory
fabula and syuzhet can be considered one of the
important principles in contemporary narrative
analysis.
• A Wedding in the Family (2000)-Documentation by
Paul Watson (It explores the institution of marriage in
contemporary society through interviews with the
respective bride and grooms wider family.)
• We see that Watson employs a complex syuzhet
pattern to deliberately disrupt the flow of the fabula.
Example

31. • In literature, we can analyze a text by using the consept of
defamiliarization.
• For instance, it is easy to see in a text such as Finnegan's
Wake by James Joyce whose second sentence reads:
• Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea,
had passencore rearrived from North Armorica on this
side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight
his penisolate war: nor had topsawyer's rocks by the
stream Oconee exaggerated themselse to Laurens
County's gorgios while they went doublin their mumper
all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe
to tauftauf thuartpeatrick: not yet, though venissoon
after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet,
though all's fair in vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with
twone nathandjoe."
For Literary Analysis

32. • Joyce invents new devices and combines
devices in new ways.
• From this perspective, defamiliarization has
its effect on the computational linguist who is
developing the algorithms.

33. • Sterne applied the concept of
defamiliarization to Tristram Shandy.
• The story of the novel, which is the day-by-
day progression of Tristram's life, is pretty
simple. But the plot is crazy complicated.
That's mainly because Tristram, the narrator of
the novel, loves not sticking to the point.
• It demonstrates so clearly the distinction
between "story" and "plot."
For Literary Analysis

35. • Mandelker, Amy. “Russian Formalism and the Objective
Analysis of Sound in Poetry”. The Slavic and East European
Journal 27.3 (1983): 327–338. Web.
• Selden, Raman, et al. A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary
Literary Thory. UK: Pearson, 2005. Print
• Shklovsky, Viktor. “Art as Technique.” Russian Formalist
Criticism: Four Essays. Ed. Ed. Lee T. Lemon and Marion J.
Reiss. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1965. 3-24.
References

36. Prepared by
Esma Biroglu
Seren Arslan
HUseyin YIldIrIm