Literary Theory

1. Formalism
By
Zia Ur Rahman and Abdullah
Definitions:
Text-oriented approach in the first half of the twentieth century that focused on the formal
aspects of a literary work by excluding biographical, historical, or intellectual contexts.
Form of a work of literature is inherently part of its context. Context possesses no literary
significance in itself, but merely provides a context for the functioning of literary “devices”.
Historical Background and Major Figures:
Aristotle basically lays the basis for formalist movements by determining function of form
over matter for literary phenomena by using formal schemes for explaining generic
features of drama.
Formalism began near the beginning of the 20th
century, emerging in the OPOJAZ group
(Society for Poetic Language) as a break with the late romantic tradition of symbolism in
literature and Futurism and a number of related movements in the visual arts.
It developed in various places under the influences of different people.
 Russian Formalism: Describes two distinct movements:
 The OPOJAZ (Obshchestvo Izucheniia Poeticheskogo Yazyka - Society for
the Study of Poetic Language in St. Petersburg.
 The Linguistic Circle in Moscow.
 Major Figures: Roman Jakobson, Victor Sholovsky, Boris
Eikhenbaum, Yury Tynyanov etc.
 Prague Linguistic Circle:
 When this critical mode was suppressed by the Soviets in the early 1930s,
the centre of this study moved to Czecslosloakia where welcomed and
continued by Prague Linguistic Circle.
 Major Figures: Roman Jacobson (who had emigrated from Russia),
Jan Mukarovsky, and Rene Wellek.
 In France, it got influence because of Claude Levi Strauss, who had met Jacobson
in New York.
Major Tenets and Assumptions of Formalism.
Study of form and study of literary devices in the text without taking into account the
historical, sociological, biographical, or psychological dimensions.Thus an intrinsic approach
which sees a work of art as an independent entity.

2. Previliges phonetic structures such as; rhyme, rhythm, meter and sound as independent
meaningful elements of literary discourse.
Literariness: Those qualities that distinguished the literary from ordinary language.
o “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”.(Jackobson,1919)
Defamiliarization: Literature ‘estranges or defamiliarize’ the ordinary language and renews
the reader’s ordinary capacity for fresh sensation.
o "Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object; the object is not
important."( Shklovsky,1917)
 Metafiction (Writing about writing).
 Alienation Effect (Self reflexive elements of a work of art or text).
Foregrounding: It is to give unusual prominence to one element or property of a text,
relative to other less noticeable aspects.
o “The aesthetically intentional distortion of the linguistic components’.
(Mukarovsky).
Fabula and Syuzhet: Fabula (story) is a chronological sequence of events, whereas, sjuzhet
(plot) can unfold in non-chronological order.
o Only plot (sjuzet) is strictly literary, while ‘story’ (fabula) is merely raw material
awaiting the organizing hand of the writer.
 The plot of Tristam Shandy by Stern.
Organic Unity: There is nothing in a literary work that can be seen in isolation. Each single
element has a function which is related to the work as a whole.
Fallacies: Affective and Intentional fallacies are disapproved.
Achievements and Influences of Formalism.
Forces writer to evaluate a work on its on terms rather than to rely on “accepted” notions.
The main influence of Russian and Czech formalism has been on the development of
stylistics and narratology.
Roman Jakobson and Tzvetan Todov have been influential in introducing concepts and
methods into French structuralism.
Better approach to be applied to poetry and short fiction.
The Russian Formalists tried to explain how aesthetic effects were produced by literary
devices, and how literary writing differed from nonliterary.
Shortcomings
A work of literature is representational of a central idea or theme whose interpretation is
dependent on the different elements that contribute to its fulfillment and meaning.