DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

Assignment: 01

✓ FORMALISM

Submitted By:
THE DEFAULTERS
MA English (Evening)

Submitted To:
Prof. Wahid Ud Din
MUJAHID JALIL
HUMAYOUN ALI
SHOUKAT ALI
NADEEM YOUSAF
HABIB SHAH
 “FORMALISM & RUSSIAN FORMALISM”
(To be presented by Mujahid Jalil ➔ 07:00 Minutes)
Formalism is a school of literary criticism and literary theory having mainly to do with
structural purposes of a particular text. It is the study of a text without taking into
account any outside influence. Formalism rejects or sometimes simply "brackets" (i.e.,
ignores for the purpose of analysis) notions of culture or societal influence, authorship,
and content, and instead focuses on modes, genres, discourse, and forms.

In literary theory, formalism refers to critical approaches that analyze, interpret, or

evaluate the inherent features of a text. These features include not only grammar and
syntax but also literary devices such as meter and tropes. The formalistic approach
reduces the importance of a text's historical, biographical, and cultural context.

Russian Formalism refers to the work of the Society for the Study of Poetic Language
(OPOYAZ) founded in 1916 in St. Petersburg by Boris Eichenbaum, Viktor Shklovsky
and Yury Tynyanov, and secondarily to the Moscow Linguistic Circle founded in 1914
by Roman Jakobson. Eichenbaum's 1926 essay "The Theory of the 'Formal Method'"
provides an economical overview of the approach the Formalists advocated, which
included the following basic ideas:

1. To explore how various literary devices produced certain aesthetic effects.

2. To analyse the form, the structure of text and its use of language.
3. The aim is to produce "a science of literature that would be both independent
and factual," which is sometimes designated by the term poetics.
4. Since literature is made of language, linguistics will be a foundational element of
the science of literature.
5. Literature is autonomous from external conditions in the sense that literary
language is distinct from ordinary uses of language, not least because it is not
(entirely) communicative.
6. Literature has its own history, a history of innovation in formal structures, and is
not determined (as some crude versions of Marxism have it) by external,
material history.
7. What a work of literature says cannot be separated from how the literary work
says it, and therefore the form and of a work, far from being merely the
decorative wrapping of an isolable content, is in fact part of the content of the
work.
8. No interest in the cultural and moral significance of literature.

THE THREE PHASES

Mechanistic Formalism: The OPOJAZ, the Society for the Study of Poetic Language
group, headed by Viktor Shklovsky was primarily concerned with the Formal method

Defaulters; MA English (Eve)

and focused on technique and device. "Literary works, according to this model,
resemble machines: they are the result of an intentional human activity in which a
specific skill transforms raw material into a complex mechanism suitable for a particular
purpose". This approach strips the literary artifact from its connection with the author,
reader, and historical background.
Organic Formalism: The analogy between biology and literary theory provided the
frame of reference for genre studies and genre criticism. "Just as each individual
organism shares certain features with other organisms of its type, and species that
resemble each other belong to the same genus, the individual work is similar to other
works of its form and homologous literary forms belong to the same genre".
Systematic Formalism: Literary texts as system. Since literature constitutes part of
the overall cultural system, the literary dialectic participates in cultural evolution. As
such, it interacts with other human activities, for instance, linguistic communication.
The communicative domain enriches literature with new constructive principles.

Viktor Shklovsky (1893-1984)

Viktor Shklovsky (1893-1984) was a Russian literary theorist. He belonged to the class
of Russian Formalism. He was also associated with the Russian army during the 1st
world war. Educated at the University of St. Petersburg and founded OPOYAZ (Society
for the study of poetic language) in the year 1916 which planted the seeds of Russian
Formalism. His essay Art as Technique, published in 1917, served as manifesto for the
group. In this essay several concepts were formulated which are crucial to
understanding the philosophical premises of Russian Formalism. The first of these is
“habitualisation”. This refers to the fact that, as we become familiar with things, we
no longer really perceive them. Perception becomes automatic. Related to this idea is
“algebraic method of thought”. By this "algebraic" method of thought we apprehend
objects only as shapes with imprecise extensions; we do not see them in their entirety
but rather recognize them by their main characteristics. Viktor Shklovsky coined the
term “Defamiliarization” in the essay, “Art as Device” which was part of the Theory of
Prose (1925). Defamiliarization is also known as estrangement. Defamiliarization is the
act of making common entities unfamiliar to the reader. It argues that poetic language
is different from practical language. The aim of practical language is to make things
easily comprehensible and convey things based on factual assertion.
Practical Language does not follow the method of defamiliarization. The idea of
Defamiliarization is aligned with poetic language instead of practical language. It is a
poetic language that conveys sense through implication rather than through direct
expressions.

Defaulters; MA English (Eve)

 “THEORIES OF NARRATIVE”
(To be presented by Humayoun Ali ➔ 05:00 Minutes)
Theories of narrative featured prominently in Russian Formalism thought, especially
distinctions between ‘story’ and ‘plot’.
1. Shklovsky distinguishes story (fabula) from plot (syuzhet).
2. He indicates that "Great literature tries to move away from storyline to plot."
3. Story is a series of events connected by time, place, character and cause and
effect. But plot is the way the author tells and arranges the story and creates the
structure.
4. The basic material of story was termed as fabula.
5. Tomashevski contrasted fabula with the syuzhet.
6. Syuzhet (plot) is the story as it is actually told.
7. The concept of plot proposed by Aristotle is known as mythos.
8. The concept of plot proposed by the Russian Formalists is known as syuzhet.
9. Aristotle’s plot had to be plausible, have a degree of inevitability and provide
insight into the human condition.
10. For the Russian Formalists, the function of plot was to defamiliarise what we are
observing.

Free and Bound Literary Motifs A further concept in Russian Formalism is what
Tomashevsky called motivation.
1. A motif is the smallest unit of the plot, a single statement of action.
2. Bound motifs are those which, according to the Russian formalists, cannot be
removed from the narrative without radically changing the sequential essence of
a narrative.
3. Free motifs are those which aren’t essential to the retelling or explaining of a
narrative. This is not to say that they aren’t highly important, but the
chronological make-up of a narrative wouldn’t be altered by a free motifs
inclusion or exclusion.
4. Motivation is employed by realism to give the illusion of the real and to allow the
reader to naturalize the text.

“JAN MUKAROVSKY”
(To be presented by Shoukat Ali ➔ 05:00 Minutes)
1. He is usually considered among structuralists but his roots are in Russian
Formalists.
2. He was a member of Prague Linguistic Circle, founded in 1926.
3. He renamed the ‘defamiliarization’ concept of Shklovsky as ‘foregrounding’.
4. He defined ‘foregrounding’ as, “the aesthetically intentional (intended ‫) جان بوجھ کر‬
distortion (changes) of the literary components”.
5. The term foregrounding clearly comes from the visual arts (painting and
photography).

Defaulters; MA English (Eve)

6. On defamiliarization, the familiar things are appeared as strange while in
foregrounding, the whole work reveals to be complicated and interrelated.
7. He emphasized the dynamic tension between literature and society in creation
of literature.
8. He argued that an object can have several functions. For example a church can
be both a place of worship and a work of art. A chair is used for sitting purposes
but can also be used to reach heighted things.
9. The art has a close relation with the tastes and preferences of a given society.
10. Aesthetic function cannot exit alone without its proper place and time.
11. He argued that aesthetic object can only exit in the mind of person who go
through the material object (physical object e.g. a book) deeply.

“THE BAKHTIN SCHOOL”

(To be presented by Nadeem Yousaf ➔ 05:00 Minutes)
1. There were three main associates in Bakhtin School. Mikhail Bakhtin, Pavel
Medvedev and Velantin Volosinov.
2. As a student and teacher, Bakhtin took a critical stance against Russian
Formalism.
3. But if the thoughts of all three associates in the Bakhtin School are combined,
their ideas are considered formalist.
4. A central point in this approach is stated by Voloshinov: “consciousness itself
can arise and become a viable fact only in the material embodiment of
signs”
5. This is to say both that language constructs subjectivity, and that language, as a
socially-constructed sign-system, is itself a material reality.
6. This approach was concerned with language or discourse as a social
phenomenon. As Selden says, “words' are active, dynamic social signs,
capable of taking on different meanings and connotations for different
social classes in different social and historical situations”.
7. Multiple meanings are normal condition of the language. And the same is known
as heteroglossia.
8. The novel where there is only single voice of author is actually change to the
natural language.
9. The members of the Bakhtin School were thus in many ways the theoretical
precursors to post-structuralism.
10. He also articulated the notion of the openness to interpretation and interaction
that exists between an audience and texts.
11. Bakhtin developed these ideas in his three works; Problems of Dostoievsky’s
Art, the revised version Problems in Dostoevsky’s Poetics (1963) and Rabelais
and his World (1966).
12. Every speech is inspired by previous utterance and expect a future response.

Defaulters; MA English (Eve)

 “ROMAN JAKOBSON”
(To be presented by Habib Shah➔ 05:00 Minutes)
1. Roman Jakobson is considered as a bridge between Russian Formalism and
Structuralism.
2. He was the founder of MLC (Moscow Linguistic Circle).
3. His writings reveal the influence of Saussure.
4. He help to found the PLC (Prague Linguistic Circle) in 1920.
5. In 1939, he left the country and settled in the USA.
6. Jakobson gained respect for his precise linguistic analyses of classic works of
literature.
7. He collaborated with Claude Levi-Strauss on an analysis of poem ‘Les Chats’
which became famous as a structuralist analysis and also drew much of
negative criticism.
8. He attempted the daunting task of trying to define ‘literariness’ in linguistic
terms. His publication ‘Style in Language’ provides his clear ideas on defining
the literariness.
9. He proposed the idea of metaphor and metonymy.
10. Metaphor can be used in a sentence by selecting a different verb. For example
motion of a ship can be compared with plough (The ship ploughed the sea).
11. Metonymy is the us of an attribute of something to suggest the whole thing.
Deepness can suggest the sea (The ship crossed the deep).
12. Jakobson developed the concepts of foregrounding. The foregrounded element
was referred as “the dominant” by the later Russian Formalists.
13. Jakobson regarded “the dominant” as the most important formalist cocept.
14. He defined “the dominant” as, “the focusing component of work of art; it rules,
determines and transforms the remaining components”.

Defaulters; MA English (Eve)