ANAMBRA STATE UNIVERSITY ULI

PMB.

A REPORT ON

FORMALISM

BY

OBIEGBUNAM CHISOM

APRIL 2019

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 ABSTRACT
Literary criticism (or literary studies) is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature.

Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical

discussion of literature's goals and methods. Though the two activities are closely related, literary

critics are not always, and have not always been, theorists.(Wikipedia.org)

This report considers formalism as a school of literary criticism and literary theory having

mainly to do with structural purposes of a particular text. It also explains different types of

formalism and literary criticism and puts forth questions that may be used in performing a

formalistic criticism.

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Table of Contents

ANAMBRA STATE UNIVERSITY ULI ................................................................................... 1

ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................ 2

TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................................ 3

INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................... 4

1.0 The Various Kinds of Formalism ..................................................................................... 5

2.0 Critical Approaches to Literature ................................................................................... 17

3.0 Formalism in Literature .................................................................................................. 22

4.0 Merits and Demerits of Formalism ..................................................................................... 25

4.1 A Checklist of Formalistic Critical Questions: .............................................................. 26

Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 27

References ................................................................................................................................. 29

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 INTRODUCTION

According to the English Dictionary,

Formalism /ˈfɔːm(ə)lɪz(ə)m/ (noun)

noun: formalism; plural noun: formalisms

1. - Excessive adherence to prescribed forms.

Eg. “academic dryness and formalism"

- The use of forms of worship without regard to inner significance.

- The basing of ethics on the form of the moral law without regard to intention or

consequences.

- concern or excessive concern with form and technique rather than content in artistic

creation.

- (in the theatre) a symbolic and stylized manner of production.

- The treatment of mathematics as a manipulation of meaningless symbols.

2. A description of something in formal mathematical or logical terms.

Eg. "there is a formalism which expresses the idea of superposition"

Formalist criticism is one way that a reader can approach his understanding of a text. When a

reader looks at a poem, play, story or novel from a formalist perspective, he is looking solely at

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the work as something to be dissected, so he looks for all of the literary techniques and devices

that an author uses to create the text and its meaning. He does not look at the author's life,

neither does he consider the text from a historical or psychological perspective nor how this text

is like other texts. (enotes.com, 2010)

1.0 The Various Kinds of Formalism

Formalism exists in other disciplines with varying similar and dissimilar meanings and

interpretations. Some of them are outlined below:

Legal formalism

This article may be too technical for most readers to understand. Please help improve it to make

it understandable to non-experts, without removing the technical details.

Legal formalism is both a descriptive theory and a normative theory of how judges should decide

cases. In its descriptive sense, formalists believe that judges reach their decisions by applying

uncontroversial principles to the facts. Although the large number of decided cases implies a

large number of principles, formalists believe that there is an underlying logic to these principles

that is straightforward and which legal experts can readily discover. The ultimate goal of

formalism would be to formalize the underlying principles in a single and determinate system

that could be applied mechanically (hence the label 'mechanical jurisprudence'). Formalism has

been called 'the official theory of judging'. It is the thesis to which legal realism is the antithesis.

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As a normative theory, formalism is the view that judges should decide cases by the application

of uncontroversial principles to the facts. (Wikipedia. Org, 2019)

Ethical Formalism

Ethical formalism is a type of ethical theory which defines moral judgments in terms of their

logical form (e.g., as "laws" or "universal prescriptions") rather than their content (e.g., as

judgments about what actions will best promote human well-being). The term also often carries

critical connotations. Kant, for example, has been criticized for defining morality in terms of the

formal feature of being a "universal law", and then attempting to derive from this formal feature

various concrete moral duties.

Ethical formalism is "considered as an absolutist system, if something is wrong, it is wrong all

the time" (Pollock, 2004). Just the same, if something is right, it is then right all the time.

(Wikipedia. Org, 2019)

Architectural Formalism

New Formalism is an architectural style that emerged in the United States during the mid-1950s

and flowered in the 1960s. Buildings designed in that style exhibited many Classical elements

including "strict symmetrical elevations" building proportion and scale, Classical columns,

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highly stylized entablatures and colonnades. The style was used primarily for high-profile

cultural, institutional and civic buildings. They were "typically constructed using rich materials

such as marble, granite or man-made composites and also incorporated certain qualities of

concrete that allowed for the creation of distinctive forms such as umbrella shells, waffle slabs

and folded plates". Edward Durrell Stone's New Delhi American Embassy (1954), which

blended the architecture of the east with modern western concepts, is considered to be the

symbolic start of New Formalism architecture. (Wikipedia. Org, 2019)

"Common features of the New Formalism style include:

 Use of traditionally rich materials, such as travertine, marble, and granite or man-made

materials that mimic their luxurious qualities

 Buildings usually set on a podium

 Designed to achieve modern monumentality

 Embraces classical precedents, such as arches, colonnades, classical columns and

entablatures

 Smooth wall surfaces

 Delicacy of details

 Formal landscape; use of pools, fountains, sculpture within a central plaza" Eg. Mark

taper forum L.A

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Formalism in Arts

In art history, formalism is the study of art by analyzing and comparing form and style. Its

discussion also includes the way objects are made and their purely visual or material aspects. In

painting, formalism emphasizes compositional elements such as color, line, shape, texture, and

other perceptual aspects rather than content, meaning, or the historical and social context. At its

extreme, formalism in art history posits that everything necessary to comprehending a work of

art is contained within the work of art. The context of the work, including the reason for its

creation, the historical background, and the life of the artist, that is, its conceptual aspect is

considered to be external to the artistic medium itself, and therefore of secondary importance.

(Wikipedia. Org, 2019)

Formalism in Philosophy

The term formalism describes an emphasis on form over content or meaning in the arts,

literature, or philosophy. A practitioner of formalism is called a formalist. A formalist, with

respect to some discipline, holds that there is no transcendent meaning to that discipline other

than the literal content created by a practitioner. For example, formalists within mathematics

claim that mathematics is no more than the symbols written down by the mathematician, which

is based on logic and a few elementary rules alone. This is as opposed to non-formalists, within

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that field, who hold that there are some things inherently true, and are not, necessarily, dependent

on the symbols within mathematics so much as a greater truth. Formalists within a discipline are

completely concerned with "the rules of the game," as there is no other external truth that can be

achieved beyond those given rules. In this sense, formalism lends itself well to disciplines based

upon axiomatic systems. (Wikipedia. Org, 2019)

Russian Formalism

Russian formalism was a school of literary criticism in Russia from the 1910s to the 1930s. It

includes the work of a number of highly influential Russian and Soviet scholars such as Viktor

Shklovsky, Yuri Tynianov, Vladimir Propp, Boris Eichenbaum, Roman Jakobson, Boris

Tomashevsky, Grigory Gukovsky who revolutionized literary criticism between 1914 and the

1930s by establishing the specificity and autonomy of poetic language and literature. Russian

formalism exerted a major influence on thinkers like Mikhail Bakhtin and Yuri Lotman, and on

structuralism as a whole. The movement's members had a relevant influence on modern literary

criticism, as it developed in the structuralism and post-structuralism periods. Under Stalin it

became a pejorative term for elitist art.

Russian formalism was a diverse movement, producing no unified doctrine, and no consensus

amongst its proponents on a central aim to their endeavors. In fact, "Russian Formalism"

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describes two distinct movements: the OPOJAZ (Obshchestvo Izucheniia Poeticheskogo

Yazyka, Society for the Study of Poetic Language) in St. Petersburg and the Moscow Linguistic

Circle. Therefore, it is more precise to refer to the "Russian Formalists", rather than to use the

more encompassing and abstract term of "Formalism".

The term "formalism" was first used by the adversaries of the movement, and as such it conveys

a meaning explicitly rejected by the Formalists themselves. In the words of one of the foremost

Formalists, Boris Eichenbaum: "It is difficult to recall who coined this name, but it was not a

very felicitous coinage. It might have been convenient as a simplified battle cry but it fails, as an

objective term, to delimit the activities of the "Society for the Study of Poetic Language."

Russian formalism is distinctive for its emphasis on the functional role of literary devices and its

original conception of literary history. Russian Formalists advocated a "scientific" method for

studying poetic language, to the exclusion of traditional psychological and cultural-historical

approaches. As Erlich points out, "It was intent upon delimiting literary scholarship from

contiguous disciplines such as psychology, sociology, intellectual history, and the list

theoreticians focused on the 'distinguishing features' of literature, on the artistic devices peculiar

to imaginative writing".

Two general principles underlie the Formalist study of literature: first, literature itself, or rather,

those of its features that distinguish it from other human activities, must constitute the object of

inquiry of literary theory; second, "literary facts" have to be prioritized over the metaphysical

commitments of literary criticism, whether philosophical, aesthetic or psychological. To achieve

these objectives several models were developed.

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The formalists agreed on the autonomous nature of poetic language and its specificity as an

object of study for literary criticism. Their main endeavor consisted in defining a set of

properties specific to poetic language, be it poetry or prose, recognizable by their "artfulness"

and consequently analyzing them as such. (Wikipedia. Org, 2019)

Mechanistic formalism

The OPOJAZ, the Society for the Study of Poetic Language group, headed by Viktor Shklovsky

was primarily concerned with the Formal method 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.

A clear illustration of this may be provided by the main argument of one of Viktor Shklovsky's

early texts, "Art as Device" (Iskússtvo kak priyóm, 1916): art is a sum of literary and artistic

devices that the artist manipulates to craft his work.

Shklovsky's main objective in "Art as Device" is to dispute the conception of literature and

literary criticism common in Russia at that time. Broadly speaking, literature was considered, on

the one hand, to be a social or political product, whereby it was then interpreted in the tradition

of the great critic Belinsky as an integral part of social and political history. On the other hand,

literature was considered to be the personal expression of an author's world vision, expressed by

means of images and symbols. In both cases, literature is not considered as such, but evaluated

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on a broad socio-political or a vague psychologico-impressionistic background. The aim of

Shklovsky is therefore to isolate and define something specific to literature or "poetic language":

these, as we saw, are the "devices" which make up the "artfulness" of literature.

Formalists do not agree with one another on exactly what a device or "priyom" is, nor how these

devices are used or how they are to be analyzed in a given text. The central idea, however, is

more general: poetic language possesses specific properties, which can be analyzed as such.

Some OPOJAZ members argued that poetic language was the major artistic device. Shklovsky,

however, insisted that not all artistic texts de-familiarize language, and that some of them

achieve defamiliarization (ostranenie) by manipulating composition and narrative.

The Formalist movement attempted to discriminate systematically between art and non-art.

Therefore, its notions are organized in terms of polar oppositions. One of the most famous

dichotomies introduced by the mechanistic Formalists is a distinction between story and plot, or

fabula and "sjuzhet". Story, fabula, is a chronological sequence of events, whereas plot, sjuzhet,

can unfold in non-chronological order. The events can be artistically arranged by means of such

devices as repetition, parallelism, gradation, and retardation.

The mechanistic methodology reduced literature to a variation and combination of techniques

and devices devoid of a temporal, psychological, or philosophical element. Shklovsky very soon

realized that this model had to be expanded to embrace, for example, contemporaneous and

diachronic literary traditions. (Wikipedia. Org, 2019)

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Organic formalism

Disappointed by the constraints of the mechanistic method some Russian Formalists adopted the

organic model. "They utilized the similarity between organic bodies and literary phenomena in

two different ways: as it applied to individual works and to literary genres".

An artefact, like a biological organism, is not an unstructured whole; its parts are hierarchically

integrated. Hence the definition of the device has been extended to its function in text. "Since the

binary opposition – material vs. device – cannot account for the organic unity of the work,

Zhirmunsky augmented it in 1919 with a third term, the teleological concept of style as the unity

of devices".

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. The most widely known work carried out in this tradition is Vladimir Propp's

"Morphology of the Folktale" (1928).

Having shifted the focus of study from an isolated technique to a hierarchically structured whole,

the organic Formalists overcame the main shortcoming of the mechanists. Still, both groups

failed to account for the literary changes which affect not only devices and their functions but

genres as well. (Wikipedia. Org, 2019)

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Systemic formalism

The diachronic dimension was incorporated into the work of the systemic Formalists. The main

proponent of the "systemo-functional" model was Yury Tynyanov. "In light of his concept of

literary evolution as a struggle among competing elements, the method of parody, "the dialectic

play of devices," becomes an important vehicle of change". 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. In response to these extra-literary

factors the self-regulating literary system is compelled to rejuvenate itself constantly. Even

though the systemic Formalists incorporated the social dimension into literary theory and

acknowledged the analogy between language and literature the figures of author and reader were

pushed to the margins of this paradigm. (Wikipedia. Org, 2019)

Linguistic formalism

The figures of author and reader were likewise downplayed by the linguistic Formalists Lev

Jakubinsky and Roman Jakobson. The adherents of this model placed poetic language at the

center of their inquiry. As Warner remarks, "Jakobson makes it clear that he rejects completely

any notion of emotion as the touchstone of literature. For Jakobson, the emotional qualities of a

literary work are secondary to and dependent on purely verbal, linguistic facts".

The theoreticians of OPOJAZ distinguished between practical and poetic language. Practical

language is used in day-to-day communication to convey information. In poetic language,

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according to Lev Jakubinsky, "the practical goal retreats into background and linguistic

combinations acquire a value in themselves". When this happens language becomes de-

familiarized and utterances become poetic".

Eichenbaum, however, criticized Shklovsky and Jakubinsky for not disengaging poetry from the

outside world completely, since they used the emotional connotations of sound as a criterion for

word choice. This recourse to psychology threatened the ultimate goal of formalism to

investigate literature in isolation.

A definitive example of focus on poetic language is the study of Russian versification by Osip

Brik. Apart from the most obvious devices such as rhyme, onomatopoeia, alliteration, and

assonance, Brik explores various types of sound repetitions, e.g. the ring (kol'co), the juncture

(styk), the fastening (skrep), and the tail-piece (koncovka) ("Zvukovye povtory" (Sound

Repetitions); 1917). He ranks phones according to their contribution to the "sound background"

(zvukovoj fon) attaching the greatest importance to stressed vowels and the least to reduced

vowels. As Mandelker indicates, "his methodological restraint and his conception of an artistic

'unity' wherein no element is superfluous or disengaged, … serves well as an ultimate model for

the Formalist approach to versification study". (Wikipedia. Org, 2019)

Linguistic analysis of the text

In "A Postscript to the Discussion on Grammar of Poetry," Jakobson redefines poetics as "the

linguistic scrutiny of the poetic function within the context of verbal messages in general, and

within poetry in particular". He fervently defends linguists' right to contribute to the study of

poetry and demonstrates the aptitude of the modern linguistics to the most insightful

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investigation of a poetic message. The legitimacy of "studies devoted to questions of metrics or

strophics, alliterations or rhymes, or to questions of poets' vocabulary" is hence undeniable.

Linguistic devices that transform a verbal act into poetry range "from the network of distinctive

features to the arrangement of the entire text".

Jakobson opposes the view that "an average reader" uninitiated into the science of language is

presumably insensitive to verbal distinctions: "Speakers employ a complex system of

grammatical relations inherent to their language even though they are not capable of fully

abstracting and defining them". A systematic inquiry into the poetic problems of grammar and

the grammatical problems of poetry is therefore justifiable; moreover, the linguistic conception

of poetics reveals the ties between form and content indiscernible to the literary critic.

'Formalism' as political offense

Russian formalism was not a uniform movement; it comprised diverse theoreticians whose views

were shaped through methodological debate that proceeded from the distinction between poetic

and practical language to the overarching problem of the historical-literary study. It is mainly

with this theoretical focus that the Formalist School is credited even by its adversaries such as

Yefimov:

The contribution of our literary scholarship lies in the fact that it has focused sharply on the basic

problems of literary criticism and literary study, first of all on the specificity of its object, that it

modified our conception of the literary work and broke it down into its component parts, that it

opened up new areas of inquiry, vastly enriched our knowledge of literary technology, raised the

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standards of our literary research and of our theorizing about literature effected, in a sense, a

Europeanization of our literary scholarship…. Poetics, once a sphere of unbridled impressionism,

became an object of scientific analysis, a concrete problem of literary scholarship ("Formalism V

Russkom Literaturovedenii", quoted in Erlich, "Russian Formalism: In Perspective" 225).

The diverging and converging forces of Russian formalism gave rise to the Prague school of

structuralism in the mid-1920s and provided a model for the literary wing of French

structuralism in the 1960s and 1970s. "And, insofar as the literary-theoretical paradigms which

Russian Formalism inaugurated are still with us, it stands not as a historical curiosity but a vital

presence in the theoretical discourse of our day"

There is no direct historical relationship between New Criticism and Russian Formalism, each

having developed at around the same time (RF: 1910-20s and NC: 1940s-50s) but independently

of the other. However, despite this, there are several similarities: for example, both movements

showed an interest in considering literature on its own terms, instead of focusing on its

relationship to political, cultural or historical externalities, a focus on the literary devices and the

craft of the author, and a critical focus on poetry. (Wikipedia. Org, 2019)

2.0 Critical Approaches to Literature

X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia’s Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama, Sixth

Edition (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), pages 1790-1818 described nine common critical

approaches to the literature thus :

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Formalist Criticism: This approach regards literature as “a unique form of human knowledge

that needs to be examined on its own terms.” All the elements necessary for understanding the

work are contained within the work itself. Of particular interest to the formalist critic are the

elements of form—style, structure, tone, imagery, etc.—that are found within the text. A primary

goal for formalist critics is to determine how such elements work together with the text’s content

to shape its effects upon readers.

Biographical Criticism: This approach “begins with the simple but central insight that literature

is written by actual people and that understanding an author’s life can help readers more

thoroughly comprehend the work.” Hence, it often affords a practical method by which readers

can better understand a text. However, a biographical critic must be careful not to take the

biographical facts of a writer’s life too far in criticizing the works of that writer: the biographical

critic “focuses on explicating the literary work by using the insight provided by knowledge of the

author’s life. Biographical data should amplify the meaning of the text, not drown it out with

irrelevant material.”

Historical Criticism: This approach “seeks to understand a literary work by investigating the

social, cultural, and intellectual context that produced it—a context that necessarily includes the

artist’s biography and milieu.” A key goal for historical critics is to understand the effect of a

literary work upon its original readers.

Gender Criticism: This approach “examines how sexual identity influences the creation and

reception of literary works.” Originally an offshoot of feminist movements, gender criticism

today includes a number of approaches, including the so-called “masculinist” approach recently

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advocated by poet Robert Bly. The bulk of gender criticism, however, is feminist and takes as a

central precept that the patriarchal attitudes that have dominated western thought have resulted,

consciously or unconsciously, in literature “full of unexamined ‘male-produced’ assumptions.”

Feminist criticism attempts to correct this imbalance by analyzing and combatting such

attitudes—by questioning, for example, why none of the characters in Shakespeare’s play

Othello ever challenge the right of a husband to murder a wife accused of adultery. Other goals

of feminist critics include “analyzing how sexual identity influences the reader of a text” and

“examining how the images of men and women in imaginative literature reflect or reject the

social forces that have historically kept the sexes from achieving total equality.”

Psychological Criticism: This approach reflects the effect that modern psychology has had upon

both literature and literary criticism. Fundamental figures in psychological criticism include

Sigmund Freud, whose “psychoanalytic theories changed our notions of human behavior by

exploring new or controversial areas like wish-fulfillment, sexuality, the unconscious, and

repression” as well as expanding our understanding of how “language and symbols operate by

demonstrating their ability to reflect unconscious fears or desires”; and Carl Jung, whose theories

about the unconscious are also a key foundation of Mythological Criticism. Psychological

criticism has a number of approaches, but in general, it usually employs one (or more) of three

approaches:

An investigation of “the creative process of the artist: what is the nature of literary genius and

how does it relate to normal mental functions?”

The psychological study of a particular artist, usually noting how an author’s biographical

circumstances affect or influence their motivations and/or behavior.

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Sociological Criticism: This approach “examines literature in the cultural, economic and

political context in which it is written or received,” exploring the relationships between the artist

and society. Sometimes it examines the artist’s society to better understand the author’s literary

works; other times, it may examine the representation of such societal elements within the

literature itself. One influential type of sociological criticism is Marxist criticism, which focuses

on the economic and political elements of art, often emphasizing the ideological content of

literature; because Marxist criticism often argues that all art is political, either challenging or

endorsing (by silence) the status quo, it is frequently evaluative and judgmental, a tendency that

“can lead to reductive judgment, as when Soviet critics rated Jack London better than William

Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Edith Wharton, and Henry James, because he illustrated the

principles of class struggle more clearly.” Nonetheless, Marxist criticism “can illuminate

political and economic dimensions of literature other approaches overlook.”

Mythological Criticism: This approach emphasizes “the recurrent universal patterns underlying

most literary works.” Combining the insights from anthropology, psychology, history, and

comparative religion, mythological criticism “explores the artist’s common humanity by tracing

how the individual imagination uses myths and symbols common to different cultures and

epochs.” One key concept in mythological criticism is the archetype, “a symbol, character,

situation, or image that evokes a deep universal response,” which entered literary criticism from

Swiss psychologist Carl Jung. According to Jung, all individuals share a “‘collective

unconscious,’ a set of primal memories common to the human race, existing below each person’s

conscious mind”—often deriving from primordial phenomena such as the sun, moon, fire, night,

and blood, archetypes according to Jung “trigger the collective unconscious.” Another critic,

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Northrop Frye, defined archetypes in a more limited way as “a symbol, usually an image, which

recurs often enough in literature to be recognizable as an element of one’s literary experience as

a whole.” Regardless of the definition of archetype they use, mythological critics tend to view

literary works in the broader context of works sharing a similar pattern.

Reader-Response Criticism: This approach takes as a fundamental tenet that “literature” exists

not as an artifact upon a printed page but as a transaction between the physical text and the mind

of a reader. It attempts “to describe what happens in the reader’s mind while interpreting a text”

and reflects that reading, like writing, is a creative process. According to reader-response critics,

literary texts do not “contain” a meaning; meanings derive only from the act of individual

readings. Hence, two different readers may derive completely different interpretations of the

same literary text; likewise, a reader who re-reads a work years later may find the work

shockingly different. Reader-response criticism, then, emphasizes how “religious, cultural, and

social values affect readings; it also overlaps with gender criticism in exploring how men and

women read the same text with different assumptions.” Though this approach rejects the notion

that a single “correct” reading exists for a literary work, it does not consider all readings

permissible: “Each text creates limits to its possible interpretations.”

Deconstructionist Criticism: This approach “rejects the traditional assumption that language

can accurately represent reality.” Deconstructionist critics regard language as a fundamentally

unstable medium—the words “tree” or “dog,” for instance, undoubtedly conjure up different

mental images for different people—and therefore, because literature is made up of words,

literature possesses no fixed, single meaning. According to critic Paul de Man, deconstructionists

insist on “the impossibility of making the actual expression coincide with what has to be

expressed, of making the actual signs [i.e., words] coincide with what is signified.” As a result,

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deconstructionist critics tend to emphasize not what is being said but how language is used in a

text. The methods of this approach tend to resemble those of formalist criticism, but whereas

formalists’ primary goal is to locate unity within a text, “how the diverse elements of a text

cohere into meaning,” deconstructionists try to show how the text “deconstructs,” “how it can be

broken down ... into mutually irreconcilable positions.” Other goals of deconstructionists

include:

(1) challenging the notion of authors’ “ownership” of texts they create (and their ability to

control the meaning of their texts) and

(2) Focusing on how language is used to achieve power, as when they try to understand how

some interpretations of a literary work come to be regarded as “truth.” (olemiss.edu, 1997)

3.0 Formalism in Literature

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.

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Formalism rose to prominence in the early twentieth century as a reaction against Romanticist

theories of literature, which centered on the artist and individual creative genius, and instead

placed the text itself back into the spotlight to show how the text was indebted to forms and other

works that had preceded it. Two schools of formalist literary criticism developed, Russian

formalism, and soon after Anglo-American New Criticism. Formalism was the dominant mode

of academic literary study in the US at least from the end of the Second World War through the

1970s, especially as embodied in René Wellek and Austin Warren's Theory of Literature (1948,

1955, 1962).

Beginning in the late 1970s, formalism was substantially displaced by various approaches (often

with political aims or assumptions) that were suspicious of the idea that a literary work could be

separated from its origins or uses. The term has often had a pejorative cast and has been used by

opponents to indicate either aridity or ideological deviance. Some recent trends in academic

literary criticism suggest that formalism may be making a comeback.

William H Thelin criticizes Maxine Hairston’s approach to teaching composition from a current-

traditional standpoint, which she then mixes with the political. He claims that “No matter how

sound the politics … the student would have no choice but to regurgitate that dogma in the

clearest terms possible and to shift concentration onto matters of structure and correctness”.

Mary Ann Cain writes that “formalism asserts that the text stands on its own as a complete

entity, apart from the writer who produced it”. Moreover, Cain says that “one can regard textual

products as teachable and still maintain that being a writer is a "natural" act, one not subject to

instruction. Composition, like creative writing, has flourished under the assumption that students

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are already writers, or have the capacity to learn-and that everyone should be writers. Yet the

questions composition tends to pose within this assumption are not so much about which aspects

of writing can or cannot be taught, but how writing can be taught and under what conditions. In

regards to formalist composition, one must ask, “to what extent is this ‘need’ for ‘academic

discourse’ real – any more than the need for more ‘imaginative writing’ is real-except to perform

some function, to get something done?”.

A formalist approach studies a text as only a text, considering its features—for example, rhymes,

cadences, literary devices—in an isolated way, not attempting to apply their own say as to what

the text means. In general, formalists are focused on the facts of a text, because they want to

study the text, not what others say about it.

In the field of literary criticism, a formalistic approach is one that studies a text as a text and

nothing more. For example, a formalist reading of a poem would focus on its rhythms, rhymes,

cadences, and structure. It would not seek to locate the poem in a wider political or cultural

context except insofar as it helped to improve the readers understanding of the text itself.

A formalistic approach to literature, once called New Criticism, involves a close reading of the

text. Formalistic critics believe that all information essential to the interpretation of a work must

be found within the work itself; there is no need to bring in outside information about the history,

politics, or society of the time, or about the author’s life. Formalistic critics spend much time

analyzing irony, paradox, imagery, and metaphor. They are also interested in the work’s setting,

characters, symbols, and point of view. (onehundredpages.wordpress.com, 2019)

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For example the poem "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star". With formalist criticism the reader would

notice the repetition of the word twinkle and consider connotation and denotation of the word. It

would notice the first person speaker of the poem. He would note the use of simile in the 4th

line (like a diamond in the sky). He would note the refrain of the first two lines in lines 5 and 6,

and he would mark the meter and the rhyme scheme. Once the poem was literarily dissected,

then the reader can consider how those elements work together to create the meaning of the

poem as a whole. (enotes.com, 2010).

4.0 Merits and Demerits of Formalism

Merits of Formalism

1. It Can be performed without much research.

2. Formalism emphasizes the value instead of the context of literature.

3. Virtually all critical approaches must begin with formalistic criticism. (quizlet.com,

2019)

4. It makes a Science of Literary Criticism

5. Viable Method enables a Professional Discipline

6. It helps the Literature student to develop "Close-Reading" skills

7. It is great for analyzing poetry

8. It is a well-known approach

9. It is easy to teach and learn and offers "critical closure" to its object.

10. It emphasizes the value of literature apart from its context (in effect makes literature

timeless).

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Demerits of Formalism

1. It can be viewed as incomplete because it ignores the:

 Historical Aspects

 Moral Aspects

 Production / Reception

 Psychological Aspects

 Gender Aspects

2. It is cannot be applied easily to long forms

3. It often results in a similarity of conclusions for different objects.

4. This style of criticism is always inferior to the object it studies. (burton.edu, 2019)

5. In this style of criticism, the text is seen in isolation. The Formalistic style of criticism

ignores the context and does not account for allusions. (quizlet.com, 2019).

6. It tends to reduce literature to little more than a collection of rhetorical devices.

4.1 A Checklist of Formalistic Critical Questions:

 How is the work structured or organized? How does it begin? Where does it go next?

How does it end?

 What is the work’s plot? How is its plot related to its structure?

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  What is the relationship of each part of the work to the work as a whole? How are the

parts related to one another?

 Who is narrating or telling what happens in the work? How is the narrator, speaker, or

character revealed to readers? How do we come to know and understand this figure?

 Who are the major and minor characters, what do they represent, and how do they relate

to one another? What are the time and place of the work—it’s setting? How is the setting

related to what we know of the characters and their actions? To what extent is the setting

symbolic?

 What kind of language does the author use to describe, narrate, explain, or otherwise

create the world of the literary work? More specifically, what images, similes, metaphors,

symbols appear in the work? What is their function? What meanings do they convey?

(onehundredpages.com, 2015)

Conclusion
Critics of formalism argue that it looks upon the text as an isolated artifact to be kept in a glass

case and treated with hushed, unthinking reverence. The text is a living, breathing thing, critics

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say, and its meaning shifts over time. It is unfixed and subject to multiple interpretations, none of

which can provide finality. On this account, a text is a process and not a thing; it is dynamic and

not set in stone.

Advocates of formalism would counter that cultural, historical, and political interpretations of

texts are all very well, but once all the outer layers of textual interpretation are stripped away, the

text in its original incarnation still remains with all its formal elements in place. Any approach

that ignores these elements is likely to miss what is most vital and most important about a text.

Then, literary criticism becomes the study of what critics say about a text rather than the text

itself. Different interpretations are perfectly valid—indeed, the whole critical enterprise would be

impossible without them—but according to formalists, such interpretations exist to clarify and

explain what is already there in the text instead of replacing it altogether. (enotes.com, 2010).

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 References

Wikipedia.org (2015) Ethical formalism, Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, [online] Available

from: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethical_formalism (Accessed 1 May 2019).

Anon (2015) Literary Criticism 101, A Useful Fiction, [online] Available from:
https://onehundredpages.wordpress.com/literary-criticism-101/ (Accessed 1 May 2019).

Wikipedia.org (2019) Formalism (art), Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, [online] Available

from: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formalism_(art) (Accessed 1 May 2019).

Wikipedia.org (2019) Formalism (philosophy), Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, [online]

Available from: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formalism_(philosophy) (Accessed 1 May
2019).

Wikipedia.org (2019) Legal formalism, Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, [online] Available

from: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_formalism (Accessed 1 May 2019).

Wikipedia.org (2019) Literary theory, Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, [online] Available

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Wikipedia.org (2019) New Formalism (architecture), Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation,

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Anon (n.d.) Strengths and Weaknesses of New Criticism, [online] Available from:
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http://burton.byu.edu/Formalism/pro-con.htm (Accessed 1 May 2019).

Anon (n.d.) Critical Approaches to Literature, --- CRITICAL APPROACHES TO

LITERATURE ---, [online] Available from: http://home.olemiss.edu/~egjbp/spring97/litcrit.html
(Accessed 1 May 2019).

Anon (n.d.) Literary Theories-Advantages and Disadvantages, Quizlet, [online] Available from:
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(Accessed 1 May 2019).

Anon (n.d.) New Formalist Interpretation, New Formalist Criticism.

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