New Criticism and Russian Formalism

Self-Assessment Exercise

In order to establish that you have understood the relevant material, please try to answer the
following questions with regards to these two Formalist movements in the space provided.
1. New Criticism and Russian Formalism are referred to as Formalist approaches because
… they pay more attention to the form and the external, technical characteristics of a
literary work and the devices employed in it, rather than the social, historical,
biographical details that inform it. In a formalist’s point of view the text reveals or
conceals nothing more than the text itself.

2. In a few words explain the basic principles of New Criticism.

For example, the work of literature is to be examined in isolation from its cultural and
historical context.

 Literature is studied for the way literary language differs from ordinary practical
language
 Art gives people access to a different, non-scientific kind of truth
 Intentional fallacy: meaning is found in the verbal design of a work of literature, not in
the author’s statements about his/her intentions
 Affective fallacy: any subjective, emotional effect the reader may have upon reading the
work is irrelevant to the verbal object
 Close reading, in order to explain the way literature embodies or enacts universal truths

3. What is New Criticism’s attitude/position on the relationship between the author and
the work of literature and reader and the work of literature?
According to New Criticism, the work of literature is the medium through which the
author can send his/her message, by use of a code (language). The reader is the one
who receives the message, but the way the message is interpreted by the reader and
the reader’s connection to the work of literature is perceived by the New Critics as
something stable. The focus is on the act of writing and not on the writer or on the
reader, neither is it on the interpretation.
 4. Can you point out some criticisms of this line of critical approach (i.e. New Criticism)?
 New Criticism disregards the effect that social, political, psychological circumstances
may have on a literary text. For New Criticism a text is completely independent of its
time, place and author.
 New Criticism focuses on the act of writing itself, not the writer or the reader

5. Can you briefly define the terms literariness and defamiliarisation as they are used by
Russian Formalism?
Literariness: The elements that make a text worthy of being called literary; all the
characteristics that separate and distinguish a literary text from any other kind of text.
Defamiliarisation: when ordinary, everyday words appear unfamiliar to the reader
because of the way they are used in literary texts;

6. Can you compare and contrast New Criticism and Russian Formalism, briefly? What are
their similarities and what are their differences?
Similarities: Both movements belong to the school of Formalism. Therefore, they both focus
on the form, the language, the technical characteristics of a literary text, especially those that
make literary language differ from ordinary language. They hold that literature and literary
devices function autonomously, independent of the outside world and of the social, historical
etc circumstances during the time of the work’s creation. This is why they consider that the
proper object of literary study is the literary texts and how they work.
Differences:

Russian Formalism New Criticism

Scientific, rational Anti-scientific, interested in the non-rational
dimension of literature
Analyses modes of operation of entire genres Concentrates on individual literary works,
especially poems
Sought a way of critical description that could Interested in traditional religious and
determine the aspects of literature that make aesthetic values
it literary