ABIEM notes

Formalism- “form” (Filipino: anyo)

- refers to style of inquiry that focuses, almost exclusively, on features of the literary text itself.
To the exclusion of biographical, historical or intellectual context. [In literary criticism]

- formalists believe that the focus of literary studies should be the text itself (not the author’s
life or social class.

-Art is produced according to certain sets of rules and with its own internal logic.

-The object of analysis is the text’s “literariness,” that which makes it a work of art and not a
piece of journalism.

Russian Formalism

- The aim is to produce “science of literature that would be both independent and factual”
- Scientifically analyze literature
- Since literature is made of language, linguistics will be a foundational element of the science
of literature.
- 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.
- Literature has its own history, a history of innovation in formal structures, and is not
determined by external, material history.
-

Form-

Content- is like water “You put water into a cup it becomes the cup”

*Content and form are 2 inseparable things, they influence one another
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