Russian Formalism considers literature as a special use of language which deviates from and distorts “practical” language to make the reader see differently. Language is therefore constructed in order to change our perceptions. According to Russian Formalism, poetry is the quintessential form of literary language, as it presents “speech organized in its entire phonic structure”, which deforms practical language to draw attention to itself.
Form and Content
According to Russian Formalism, to understand literature one has to look at the form as well as the content. Form and content for the first time in critical literary analysis were considered as one and intrinsically linked. Formalism stresses that meaning is conveyed from the connotations of the form and only by looking at the form can literary critics understand the text’s meaning. The form of the text is not only the receptacle of the content, but it provides a way of understanding the literary devices employed by the text. The form thus conveys the notion of textuality and how a work of art achieves its effects through its employed literary devices.
Sjuzet and Fabula
Russian Formalism made a distinction between sjuzet (plot) and fabula (story). The plot is strictly literary, whereas the story is merely raw material awaiting the organizing hand of a writer. The plot is not merely the events of the story but it also encompasses the literary devices used to narrate the story.
Sterne in Tristam Shandy employs digressions, displacement of parts of the book, and extended descriptions to make up the novel’s form. In this case the plot is an actual violation of the expected chronological order of events.
Free and Bound Literary Motifs
A further concept in Russian Formalism is what Tomashevsky called motivation. A motif is the smallest unit of the plot, a single statement of action. Tomashevsky made a distinction between a free motif and a bound motif.
A bound motif is required by the story, whereas a free motif while not essential to the story is the literary point of view of the text and its aesthetic quality. This concept is a reversal of the traditional view that literary devices are employed by content. According to Sterne, Tristam Shandy is a text totally devoid of motivation and entirely constructed out of formal devices which are bared. In contrast, motivation is employed by realism to give the illusion of the real and to allow the reader to naturalize the text.
Defamiliarization and Laying Bare Literary Devices
Russian Formalism challenged the traditional idea of critical literary analysis that art should conceal its literary devices. The Formalist school of thought refused to naturalize text by attributing it to the state of mind of the author, but instead it focused its critical writing on the novel’s literariness which checks naturalization.
The concept of Shklovsky’s defamiliarization and laying bare a text’s literary devices influenced Bertolt Brecht’s alienation effect. Brecht’s alienation effect refrains the audience from empathizing with the protagonist so as not to miss the point the dramatist wishes to convey.
Read more about Literary English Studies and Critical Theory on Suite 101:
- Realism and Naturalism in Literature
- Virginia Woolf and the Modernist Movement in Literature
- Critical Theory and the Humanistic Tradition in Literature
- Marxist Theory: Marxism, Literature, and Ideology
- Louis Althusser: Ideology and Literature
- Literary Theory: An Introduction to Russian Formalism
- Structuralist Theories: A Very Short Introduction
- Roman Jakobson: The Metaphoric and the Metonymic Texts
- Roland Barthes and Post-Structuralism
References:
Selden, Raman, Peter Widdowson & Peter Brooker. A Reader's Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory. Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2005.
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