Class Assignment

Submitted by Atta Ur Rahman

Submitted to Dr. Danish Suleiman
Student No 20234960
Course ELL 547

Q. Explain the concept of Formalism in detail and also highlight some important
formalist writers and their works.

"The meaning of a poem lies not in its content, but in the interplay of its formal
elements." I.A. Richards

Background
Discussions on the nature of literature and the role of form and content can be traced
back to Plato’s time. Many critics has theorized about various aspects of literature
from time to time but our modern understanding of literature has been influenced
mostly by the nineteenth century theorization and discussions of literature. “In the the
nineteenth century, historical, psychological, and biographical approaches dominated
the work of literary critics in both Europe and America”(Schulenberg, 2012). In
addition, literary criticism was frequently humanistic and impressionistic. As they
developed ideas of naturalism and realism, many English and American critics were
focused on creating a literary tradition that was uniquely American and helping to
establish a sense of national identity.
Thus it can be concluded that till the end of 19 th century content and context were
given priority while the form and structure of art was relatively ignored by the critics.
However, this trend changed in the 20th century. The twentieth century is marked by
the introduction of formalism in the literary tradition.

Introduction of Formalism
In the 20th century, the focus of literary critics completely changes from content and
context to form and structure. It is impossible to comprehend literary criticism and
theory from the 20th century without acknowledging the significance of form. "Art
has precisely the same chance of survival as does form, no better”(Adorno, 1997).
It is difficult to exaggerate the significance of Formalism in relation to this form-
related issue. Formalism had a significant influence on literary studies in the 20th
century. This movement grew in many areas in many forms among which Russian
formalists are very prominent. The group of Russian Formalists was also quite varied.
The majority of them were born in the 1890s, rose to fame in Russian literature during
World War I, prospered in the 1920s, and then fell into disuse when Stalinism gained
traction in the late 1920s.

What is Formalism in its very essence?

Formalism is a literary theory that emphasis on a text’s form, structure, syntax,
language and style over its content. In order to appreciate the value and meaning of a
text formalists dig into the form and structure of a text because they believed that
every text can stand on its own and can have its own coherent meaning. Formalism
emerged as a reaction in contradiction to the dominant styles of literature that were
mainly focused on social, psychological and emotional perspective of a text. The
purpose of formalism was to introduce more systematic and scientific way of literary
criticism by altering the structures and use of language in the texts. Formalists
believed that literature should be equipped with a more complex and unique way of
using language to distinguish it from ordinary language. In order to make literary
language more complex and distinguished from ordinary language, Formalists
introduced new ways of using language in a text including defamiliarization in which
the authors used familiar things in an unusual way to compel the reader to give more
focus to the text and interpret it with a new perspective.

Main Tenets of Formalism

1. Form Over Content

Formalist literary critics emphasis more on form as compared to content. They give
priority to style, structure, language and literary devices used in a text as compared to
its content. They focus more on how the story is told rather than what the story is
about.

2. Autonomy of Text
Formalists believe that every text should be looked as an independent and self
contained entity which is an organic whole in itself. They believe that all the things
which are required to appreciate and understand a text are present inside that text.
Thus, the text does not depends on historical background and context of a text to be
understood and analysed rather it can stand for itself.

3. Objective Analysis
As Formalists were inspired from the scientific method, the emphasized on a more
objective and unbiased method of analysis and interpretation. By focusing on the
inherent features of a text and talking about them as they were presented in the text
they tend to be more systematic and objective rather than personal.

4. Rejection of External Factors

Formalism rejects external factors like social and historical background and the
author’s intention ton analyse a text. It did this by focusing solely on the formal and
structural features of the text.

5. Focus on Literary Devices

Formalists are very interested in the use of literary devices. According to them, in
order to understand the meaning of a text, figure of speech such as symbolism, irony
and metaphor plays a vital role. Literary devices plays vital role in creating meaning
of the text rather than being only ornamental.

6. De familiarization

De familiarization is a concept put forward by Russian formalist in 20 th century. In

this concept, formalists presented familiar objects and ideas in an unusual and novel
way in order to defamiliarized them for the reader compelling them to interpret it with
new point of view. In this process the authors compelled reader to give more attention
to the use of language and its structure by altering the usual way of using language.
For this purpose the authors played on various meaning of the words or using a
familiar notion in some new way.

7. Literariness of the text

Literariness is the way language is structured to differentiate literary writings from
non-literary ones using particular grammatical and formal characteristics (Baldick
2008). A literary work's distinguishing characteristics are found in the language
employed, not in extraliterary contexts like history or social occurrences that may
have influenced its creation. Thus, the characteristic that distinguishes a certain work
as literary is known as literariness. By employing certain creative elements like meter,
rhyme, and other patterns of sound and repetition, it sets a literary work apart from
everyday texts.

Some Important Formalist Writers and their Works

Roman Jakobson (1896– 1982)

Roman Jakobson was one of the very prominent members of the Moscow Linguistic
Circle. He founded the Prague Linguistic Circle in 1926, laying the groundwork for
structuralism. He co-founded the Linguistic Circle of New York in America after
escaping Nazi captivity in 1943. Jakobson developed the idea of "literariness," a
characteristic that elevates a spoken word to the level of art, in response to the
Russian Formalists' attempt to establish literary criticism as a field with a scientific
foundation. According to Jakobson, who proposed a fundamental contrast between the
literary and practical uses of language, literariness is the quality that would highlight a
text's formal aspects and provide the reader with a unique mode of experience.

Victor Shklovsky (1893– 1984)

One of the two schools of Russian Formalism, the ‘Society for the Study of Poetic
Language’, was founded by Shklovsky. The idea of defamiliarization and his analysis
of plot/story in literature are among his most significant contributions. A key idea in
formalist literary theory, "defamiliarization" was first presented by Shkolvsky in his
1917 article "Art as Technique." Talking about defamiliarization he states that the
goal of literature is to make things more noticeable, renew common views, and
alienate or defamiliarise its language medium.
He is also well-known for his narrative and storyline theories. He made the difference
between plot and story which has normally been used interchangeably.

Boris Eichenbaum (1886– 1959)

Eichenbaum aimed to free literature from any ideological and political connotations.
According to his definition, “formalism is an endeavour to establish a separate literary
science that solely concentrates on the literary content.”(Eichenbaum, 2001)
Additionally, the formalists maintained that the literary legacy should be kept apart
from other facets of society. According to Eichenbaum, the language of poetry defied
the common word connotations of daily speech.

Limitation of Formalism

Formalism has numerous proponents, yet it is also attacked as a philosophy that is

inherently unintelligible and lacking completeness. The formal approach has received
a lot of attention but it has also generated controversy not because of its distinctive
approach, but due to its perspective on comprehension and studying the method.
There is a claim that literary works should only be analyzed from a literary
perspective. Some critics also point out that it omits details that are seen to be
essential to the interpretation, such as art history, the artist's biography or objectives,
the period in which the work was made, or society. In contrast to Freud's criticism of
psychoanalysis, the Formalists rely heavily on Saussure's language theories.
Formalists concentrate on the work's language. They conduct an unbiased analysis of
the work's literary components. For the Formalists, the "form of discourse," which has
its roots in Aristotle's Poetics and Rhetoric, is crucial. Like the Formalists, Aristotle
places more stress on how the topic is treated than on how it is handled and this has
been criticed by many critics which is why formalism did not stay for a long time on
the literary spotlight.
Works Cited

Adorno, T. W. (1997). Aesthetic theory (R. Hullot-Kentor, Trans.). University of

Minnesota Press. (Original work published 1970)

Baldick, C. (2008). The Oxford dictionary of literary terms (3rd ed.). Oxford
University Press. http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?

Eichenbaum, B. (2001). The theory of the ‘formal method’ (V. B. Leitch et al., Eds.).
In The Norton anthology of theory and criticism (pp. 1062–1087). Norton. (Original
work published 1927)

Schulenberg, U. (2012). Formalism and structuralism. In M. Middeke, T. Müller, C.

Wald, & H. Zapf (Eds.), English and American Studies (pp. 89–103).
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-00406-2_5