Russian Formalism Literary Theory in Urdu/Hindi| Literary Criticism

Notes:
https://cruxofone.blogspot.com/p/russ...



This critical approach examines a literary text or art work through its aesthetic composition such as form, language, technique and style. Formalists believe that the art-object can be isolated from social, cultural and historical influences and examined as an autonomous whole.
This critical approach examines a literary text or art work through its aesthetic composition such as form, language, technique and style. Formalists believe that the art-object can be isolated from social, cultural and historical influences and examined as an autonomous whole.
Human Mind & mathematical order in nature

FORM which provides this mathematical aesthetic in literature
According to formalists, the important thing is how literary text is narrated rather than what it is. For instance, due to different styles of narrators, the text can not be effective because the form of narrative can differ from one to another.

(i)Moscow Linguistic Circle, in 1915
( Roman Jakobson, Osip Brik and Boris Tomashevsky )

(ii) The OPOYAZ (The Society For The Study of Poetic Language) in 1916
(Victor Shklovsky, Boris Eichenbaum and Yuri Tynyanov)

Russian Formalism invented two most important terms while analysing a work of literature
(a) Defamiliarization
(b) Foregrounding
Fabula as "the raw material of a story",
Syuzhet as "the way a story is organized".

In order to make the story interesting the author uses the techniques like selection, concealment (certain aspects are not revealed to the reader), focalisation, distancing and taking up different points of view..

Rene Wellek’s criticism on Russian Formalism
Wellek says that Russian Formalism is too technical and scientific and does not give enough important to the humane element in literature. If the Russian Formalists believe that certain techniques can bring about novelty in presentation, then with repeated use those methods will become familiar to the reader and the novelty will be eventually lost. Thus it is nonsensical to insist on novelty for long.

Julia Kristeva’s criticism on Russian Formalism

Russian Formalism is too mechanical in its methods. It does not give enough importance to creativity which is vital to literature. They claimed that by following certain linguistic and literary techniques literariness can be created. Kristeva believed that each individual text had its own importance in the history of literature.


The most important thing for the formalists is to find out the ‘literariness’ in it as Roman Jakobson wrote in 1921: ‘The object of study in literary science is not literature but ‘literariness’, that is which makes a given work a literary work. The rejected the role of intuition, imagination and genius in the production of a literary work. Rather, they say that accumulating literary devices, a literary is produced. For them literary devices like –ambiguity, metaphor, parallelism, imagery, personification, allusion, diction, paradox, epigraph, foreshadowing, alliteration and euphemism etc., are the most important elements of literary work. Here we can mention Shklovsky’s words “the literary work is the sum total of literary devices.’
Russian Formalism invented two most important terms while analysing a work of literature and they are – (a) Defamiliarization and (b) Foregrounding.
These two play very important role in the production of literary works according to the formalists. Viktor Shklovsky is the main figure who talked about ‘defamiliarization’ in his seminal book ‘Art as Technique (1917). The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Theory says about defamiliarization (or ostrananie): “To defamiliarize is to make fresh, new, strange, different what is familiar and known.” And this removes the automatism of the text delaying the perception of the reader. Because according to Shklovsky the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged.
Aktualisace is the Czech word for the English term ‘Foregrounding’ that denotes the use f devices and techniques which push the act of expression into the foreground so that language draws attention to itself. Foregrounding occurs especially in poetic language. The Czech linguist Jan Mukarovsky (in his essay Standard language and Poetic Language) observes: “The function of poetic language consists in the maximum foregrounding of the utterance……it is not used in the services of communication, but in order to place in the foreground the act of expression, the act of speech itself.’ In a sense, foregrounding is the art which reveals art rather than concealing it.