COMPARING AND CONTRASTING

Comparing and Contrasting

Comparing and Contrasting

Formalism

Russian Formalism

Russian Formalism is a movement of literary criticism and interpretation that emerged in Russia during the second decade of the twentieth century and remained active until about 1930. It concentrated on analyzing the internal structure of literary texts and involved detailed inquiry into plot structure, narrative perspective, symbolic imagery, and other literary techniques. In other words, it stressed the importance of form and technique over content.

This movement began in 1915-1916 with the founding of the Moscow Linguistic Circle and the Petersburg Society for the Study of Poetic Language (OPOJAZ). The most influential figure of the Moscow group was Roman Jakobson, while the most influential of Petersburg group was Victor Shklovsky.

In reaction to other approaches of criticism which concentrate on the relationship between the literary work and the cultural and sociological context it is supposed to reflect, the Formalists approached literature as a separate system looking at the literary work as being isolated from the political, sociological, and economical conditions of the time. From this point emerged certain dominant principles:

Focus on defining the literariness of the literary work: This attitude was expressed by Roman Jakobson in 1921 when he said: "the object of the science of literature is not literature, but literariness -that is, that which makes a given work a work of literature"

Preoccupation with the technical devices of literature: In later Formalism the emphasis shifted from the relation between literary and non-literary language to the linguistic and formal aspects of literary texts themselves; that is to say to the technical devices of literature.

Motivation of the principal structural devices is by aesthetic rather than realistic or intellectual purposes: the aim of the device is simply to create the work, not to express a thought. According to Shklovsky, "The story is, in fact, only material for plot formulation" . This means that the writer, first of all, thinks of a specific plot, a certain form, and later on he looks for a story or a content to fill this form.

The anti Aesthetic

Theatricalism denotes the style of production during this period. In short, the style of the production, as chosen by the director, dictates the aesthetic rules by which the production team works. Currently, producing Shakespeare does not mean that it has to be done in Renaissance England. Indeed, artists have found that updating the location and time of a Shakespearean play makes ...