Lheyla Francesca Culanag English Quarter 3

Grade 10- Equality March 15, 2023

Formalism Approach

What is Formalism?
Formalism is an object-centered theory of critical approach to literature. It focuses only on
the work itself and completely ignores the author of the work, time and background information
of the work, and the audiences’ feeling or perception about the work.

What is the origin of the word “formalism”?

The word ‘formalism’ has derived from the word ‘form’. The ‘ism’ is a belief or an approach of
looking at things. So, ‘formalism’ is the approach of looking at things strictly adhering to their
forms.

What is FORMALISM APPROACH?

The formalism approach to literature examines a text by its "organic form" - its setting, theme,
scene, narrative, image and symbol. It is often referred as "a scientific approach to literature,"
because it advocates methodical and systematic readings of texts. Excluding any external
elements or outside information (i.e author's personal life or the social, historic background of
the time the text was written or the reader's bias) in criticism, the formalistic approach aims to
analyze merely the text itself. All the things about culture, politics, and the author’s intent
or societal influences are excluded from formalism. Therefore, all interpretations must be
supported by evidences found in the text.
Formalism asserts that formal properties are the only things that matter about literature.

The formal properties of a literary work include:

 Words (meaning of the words)
 Shape/structure of the text
 Harmony of the words
 The rhythm of the sentences
 Rhyming of the words
 Meaning of the text as a whole
The formal properties of a literary work do NOT include: 
 Time of the work
 Background of the work
 Representation of the work
 The symbolism of the words
 Author’s moral, religious, or political values
 Author’s personal life

Formalist Criticism analyzes the form of a literary work to discover its true meaning (not
what the audiences think but what the text says). Formalism holds that true meaning can be
determined only by analyzing the literary elements of the text and by understanding how these
elements work together to form up a cohesive whole

Using formalism, a critic can show how the various parts of a work are welded together to
make an organic whole. This approach examines a text as a self-contained object; it does
not, therefore, concern itself with biographical information about the author, historical events
outside of the story, or literary allusions, mythological patterns, or psychoanalytical traits of the
characters (except those aspects described specifically in the text.)
A formalist critic examines the form of the work as a whole, the form of each individual part
of the text (the individual scenes and chapters), the characters, the settings, the tone, the point
of view, the diction, and all other elements of the text which join to make it a single text. After
analyzing each part, the critic then describes how they work together to make give meaning
(theme) to the text.

A formalist critic analyzes:  

 How the work is structured or organized (formed)
 How it begins
 How it is advancing/transiting to the next lines
 How it ends
 How the plot is built
 How the plot relates to its structure
 How each part of the work relates to the work as a whole
 How all the parts relate to one another
 How the narrator/speaker narrates the story
 Point of view of the narrator
 The major and the minor characters
 How the characters are related to one another
 Actions of the characters
 The language of the literary work
 Style of the writing
 Literary devices such as imageries, similes, metaphors, ironies, paradox, etc.
 How the literary devices function to create meaning

Formalist critics examine a text regardless of its time period, social/political/religious

setting, and author’s background. They believe that true meaning of the text lies only in the
text. Other issues create a false impression of the text and thus jeopardize the audiences’
interpretation. So the formalist critics believe that a text should not be interpreted based on a
reader's response to it (effective fallacy), the author's stated or inferred intention (intentional
fallacy), author's life (biographical fallacy), and historical/religious/social contexts (contextual
fallacies). According to formalism, these fallacies are the subjective biases and a text should be
analyzed objectively to determine its true meaning.

Below summarize the essential concepts of the formalistic approach:

 Effective fallacy: Formalistic practitioners believe the effective fallacy, which states that the
meaning or value of a work may be determined by its effect on the audience, is
irrelevant; they think evaluation of a piece of literature cannot be based solely on its emotional
impacts. Literary criticism must concentrate on the qualities of the work itself that produce
such effects.
 Intentional fallacy: Formalistic practitioners believe the intentional fallacy, which states that
an author's intention (plan or purpose) in creating a work of literature, is irrelevant in
analyzing or evaluating a work of literature because the meaning and value of a literary work
must reside in the text itself, independent of authorial intent.
 Biographical fallacy: The belief that one can explicate the meaning of a work of literature
by asserting that it is really about events in its author's life.  Biographical critics retreat
from the work of literature into the author's biography to try to find events or persons or places
which appear similar to features of the work, and then claim the work "represents those
events, persons, or places," an over-simplified guess about Neo-formalist "mimesis."  New
Criticism considers it "fallacious" (illogical) because it does not allow for the fact that poets use
their imaginations when composing, and can create things that never were or even things that
never could be.
 Contextual fallacy: To quote out of context is to remove a passage from its surrounding
matter in such a way as to distort its meaning. The context in which a passage occurs
always contributes to its meaning, and the shorter the passage the larger the contribution. For
this reason, the quoter should always be careful to quote enough of the context not to
misrepresent the meaning of the quote. Of course, in some sense, all quotation is out of
context, but by a "contextomy", I refer only to those quotes whose meaning is changed by a
loss of context. 
Formalism emphasizes close readings of the text to analyze the deeper meanings of the words
individually and collectively.   

Formalism is based on the technical purity of a text. Formalism is divided into two branches
Russian Formalism and New Criticism. Formalism also argued that a text is an autonomous
entity liberated from the intention of the author.

 Russian Formalism – was a school of literary criticism in Russia from 1910 to 1930. Some
prominent scholars of Russian Formalism were Viktor Shklovsky, Yuri Tynianov, Vladimir
Propp, Boris Eichenbaum, Roman Jakobson, Boris Tomashevsky and Grigory Gukovsky.
Russian Formalism brought the idea of scientific analysis of poetry. Russian Formalism
alludes to the work of the Society for the Study of Poetic Language (OPOYAZ), 1916 in St.
Petersburg by Boris Eichenbaum, Viktor Shklovsky and Yury Tynyanov. It also refers to the
Moscow Linguistic Circle founded in 1914 by Roman Jakobson. Principles of Russian
Formalism are as follows – Analysis of literature should be factual. Linguistics will also be an
aspect of Russian Formalism. Literature is independent of external sources surrounding
the texts. 
 New Criticism – New Criticism is an American Literary theory in the 20 th century. Its
philosophy was taken from John Crowe Ransom’s The New Criticism, 1941. New Criticism
talked about the closed-reading approach. The closed-reading approach was a method
developed by I.A. Richards in which only words on-page were analyzed very closely in a
text. It argued that a text should be very closely read and analyzed without referring to
external materials and issues such as cultural, political, and economic and others.

References
A Definition of Formalism: Including Properties and Checklist of Formalist Criticism.
https://www.basic-concept.com/c/definition-of-formalism-including-properties

Formalistic Approach to Their Eyes Were Watching God.

https://formalisticapproach.weebly.com/introduction-to-formalistic-approach.html
Writing a Formalist Literary Analysis.
https://www2.bellevuecollege.edu/artshum/materials/engl/silano/fall2005/101lsb/
formalistlitanalyassgn.htm

Introduction to Formalism. https://englishsummary.com/lesson/formalism-in-literature-definition-

meaning-and-characteristics/

Quoting Out of Context. https://www.fallacyfiles.org/quotcont.html

Biographical Fallacy. http://faculty.goucher.edu/eng215/biographical_fallacy.htm