Russian Formalism was a movement in literary criticism and interpretation that emerged in Russia in the early 20th century. It was championed by philologists and literary historians who sought to move beyond psychologism and biographism in literary scholarship. The Russian Formalists analyzed the internal linguistic and structural features of literary works, rather than their content or context. They asserted that these formal elements comprise the "literariness" of a text. Though suppressed by the Soviet government in the 1930s, Russian Formalism influenced later movements like American New Criticism and theorists like Barthes, de Man, Kristeva and Jameson.

1. RUSSIAN FORMALISM
AT A PRESENT TIME
Akhmetova N., Makhanbet A.,

2. RUSSIAN FORMALISM
1. Russian Formalism, a movement of literary criticism and
interpretation, emerged in Russia during the second decade of the
twentieth century and remained active until about 1930.
2. The Russian Formalist movement was championed by philologists
and literary historians, e.g. Victor Shklovsky, Roman Jakobson,
Boris Eichenbaum, Boris Tomashevsky and Yuri Tynyanov.

3. ■ the Moscow Linguistic Circle,
founded by the Roman
Jakobson in 1915 and included
Grigorii Vinokur and Petr
Bogatyrev, and the
Petersburg OPOJAZ (Obščestvo
izučenija POètičeskogo JAZyka,
“Society for the Study of Poetic
Language”), which came into
existence a year later and was
known for scholars such as
Viktor Shklovsky, Iurii Tynianov,
Boris Eikhenbaum, Boris
Tomashevskii, and Victor
Vinogradov.
■ Although the Symbolists had
partially succeeded in redressing
the imbalance of content over
form, they “could not rid
themselves of the notorious theory
of the ‘harmony of form and
content’ even though it clearly
contradicted their bent for formal
experimentation (Eikhenbaum,
“Theory” 112).
■ they were united in their attempt to
move beyond the psychologism
and biographism that pervaded
nineteenth-century Russian literary
scholarship.

4. ● «The subject of literary scholarship is not literature in its totality but
literariness, i.e., that which makes of a given work a work of literature.»
Roman Jakobson
● «The literary scholar ought to be concerned solely with the inquiry into
distinguishing features of the literary materials.»
Boris Eichenbaum

5. ● To study literature is to study poetics, which is an analysis of work’s
constituent parts – its linguistic and structural features – or its form.
Form, they asserted, included the internal mechanics of the work
itself, especially its poetic language. These internal mechanics, or
what the Formalists called devices, comprise the artfulness and
literariness of any given text, not a work’s content.

6. According to Shklovsky narrative prose has two
important aspects:
fabula (story)
syuzhet (plot)
Fabula is the raw material of the story and can be
be considered close to the writer’s working outline.
This contains the chronological series of events of
the story.
The syuzhet is the literary devices the writer uses
to transform a story into a plot.

7. ● As a group, The Russian Formalists were suppressed and disbanded in
1930 by the Soviet government because they were unwilling to view
literature through the Stalinist regime’s political and ideological
perspectives. Their influence, however, continued to flourish in
Czechoslovakia through the work of Prague Linguistic Circle (founded in
1926, its leading figure being Roman Jakobson) and through the Russian
folktale scholar Vladimir Propp and the Bakhtin Linguistic Circle.

8. 1. In the United States, the Formalist approach found a sympathetic
cousin in New Criticism, which emphasized, though in organic
forms actually reminiscent of Russian Symbolism, the literary
text as a discrete entity whose meaning and interpretation need
not be contaminated by authorial intention, historical conditions,
or ideological demands. (1970s-1980s)
2. American New Criticism. Figures as diverse as Roland
Barthes , Paul de Man, Juia Kristeva, and Fredric Jameson are all
heavily indebted to the aims and strategies of Russian
Formalism.

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Russian Formalism was without a doubt a
transitional and transitory period in the
history of literary study. But insofar as the
literary-theoretical paradigms it
inaugurated are still with us, it stands not
as a mere historical curiosity but a vital
presence in the critical discourse of our
day.

11. Research
Formalism research involves studying the ways in
which students present their writing.
Allowing the text to
speak to the readers
Unintended meaning in
a written piece
these two methods deal with language as the “master” writer
versus a teacher as the “master” writer.