Formalism

Critical Approach to Literature

“Poetry does not inhere in any particular element but depends upon the set of relationships, the upon the set of relationships, the structure, which we call the poem.”

Robert Penn Warren: “Pure and Impure Poetry”

Key Terms

• Affective fallacy

• Allusion

• Ambiguity

• Carnival

• Dialogizedheteroglossia

• Etymology

• Figure of speech • Carnival

• Connotation

• Defamiliarization

• Denotation

• Dialogism

• Figure of speech

• Heteroglossia

• Image

• Intentional Fallacy

• Irony

Key Terms

• Motifs

• Paradox

• Paraphrase

• Poetics

• Structure

• Symbol

• Tension

• Unfinalizability• Poetics

• Point of View

• Polyphony

• Russian Formalism

• Unfinalizability

• Unity

Formalism

• Sometimes called New Criticism, Aesthetic or Textual Criticism (because of its concerns)

• For decades, people learned to read, analyze, and appreciate literature using this approach, and appreciate literature using this approach, making it one of the most influential methods of literary analysis that the twentieth-century readers encountered.

Formalism

• Its sustained popularity among readers comes primarily from the fact that it provides them a way to understand and enjoy a work for its own inherent value as a piece of literary art.own inherent value as a piece of literary art.

• Emphasizes close reading of the work itself.

• Puts focus on the text as literature.

• Does not treat the text as an expression of social, religious, or political ideas.

Formalism

• As a result, formalism makes those who apply its principles and follow its processes better, more discerning readers.

Formalism: Historical Background

• Any new school of criticism is both an offspring of those that have preceded it and a reaction against them.

• The New Criticism, with its emphasis on unity • The New Criticism, with its emphasis on unity and form, is the direct descendant of the aesthetic theories of the romantic poets

Formalism: Historical Background

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge believed that the spirit of poetry must “embody in order to reveal itself; but the connection of parts as a whole, so each part is at

• Form, according to him was not simply the visible, external shape of literature.

• It was something “organic”, “innate”. a whole, so each part is at

once end and means!”“organic”, “innate”.

• “It shapes as it develops itself from within, and the fullness of its development is one and the same with the perfection of its outward form.”

New Criticism

• New Criticism was a formalist movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. It emphasized close reading, 20th century. It emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of literature functioned as a self-contained, self-referential aesthetic object.

The New Criticism: Historical Background

• The New Criticism was more directly a reaction against the attention of the scholars and teachers in the early part of the 20th

century paid to the biographical and historical century paid to the biographical and historical context of a work, thereby diminishing the attention given to the literature itself.

The New Criticism: Historical Background

• Instead of dealing directly with a poem, for example, the previous generation’s critics were likely to treat it as a sociological or historical record. historical record.

The New Criticism

• A theory in literature that would have a reader understand the value of its work for its own inherent work, not for its service to metaliterary matters. metaliterary matters.

THE NEW CRITICS

• John Crowe Ransom

• Robert Penn Warren

• Allen Tate

AUTHORS THEY STUDIES

• T.S. Eliot

• I.A. Richards

• William Empson• Allen Tate

• Donald Davidson

• Cleanth Brooks

• William Empson

The New Critics

• Were influenced by T.S. Eliot explanation of how emotion is expressed in art. He called it objective correlative – “a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.”

The New Criticism

• The critics went on to develop a sense of importance of form, their practice emphasizing on the close reading of texts and appreciation of order. appreciation of order.

• It asserted that understanding a work comes from looking at it as a self-sufficient object with formal elements, laws of its own that could be studied.

Russian Formalism

• Different from the New Critics

• Formed in Moscow and St. Petersburg in the 1920s.

• Two separate schools • Two separate schools

Russian Formalism

• Literature should be understood and should be studied in a scientific manner.

• Their focus is poetics – the strategies the writers used – rather than on history, writers used – rather than on history, biography, or subject matter.

Russian Formalism

• The works of the Russian Formalists was based on the theories of Ferdinand de Saussure, the French linguist.

• Saussure’s influence is seen in the Russian • Saussure’s influence is seen in the Russian formalist’s argument that literature is a systematic set of linguistic and structural elements that can be analyzed.

• They saw literature as a self-enclosed system that can be studied not for its content but for its form.

Russian Formalists

• They asserted that everyday language is just that; everyday or ordinary.

• Literary language is different.

• It deviates from the expected, using all the • It deviates from the expected, using all the devices an author has the power to manipulate to make what is familiar seem strange and familiar.

Russian Formalist: Viktor Shklovsky

• Coined the term defamiliarization to refer to the literary process that gives vitality to language that might otherwise be all too predictable.

• Defamiliarization is the artful aspect of a work that makes the reader alert and active; it causes the reader to intensify the attention paid to the text, to look again at an image in an effort to take in the unexpected.

Russian Formalism

• Distinction between story (fibula / fabula) and plot (sjuzhet)

• Story – refers to the actual sequence of events in a narrative in a narrative

• Plot – refers to the artistic presentation, which can jumble the sequence, repeat episodes, or include surprises

Russian Formalism

• In 1930, the Soviet government forced the Russian formalists to disband because they were unwilling to treat literature as an expression of Soviet ideology.

• Some of the leading proponents moved to Prague, where they continued their work.

• Eventually, the two of them, Roman Jakobsonand Rene Wellek, emigrated to America, where they met with the New Critics.

Mikhail Bakhtin

• Russian literary theorist of the 20th century; does not fit easily into any school of modern literary criticism

Key concepts discussed by Bakhtin

• Dialogism

• Unfinalizabilityliterary criticism

• Unfinalizability

• Heteroglossia

• Polyphony

• Carnival

Mikhail Bakhtin

DIALOGISM

UNFINALIZABILITY

HETEROGLOSSIAHETEROGLOSSIA

POLYPHONY

CARNIVAL

Mikhail BakhtinKEY CONCEPT IN MIKHAIL BAKHTIN’S THEORY OF LANGUAGE

The belief that language (all

DIALOGISM

UNFINALIZABILITY

HETEROGLOSSIAThe belief that language (all forms of speech and writing) is always a dialogue consisting of at least one speaker, one listener / respondent, and a relationship between the two.

HETEROGLOSSIA

POLYPHONY

CARNIVAL

Mikhail BakhtinIt opposes the view that language is an utterance that issues from a single speaker or writer, that is, being

DIALOGISM

UNFINALIZABILITY

HETEROGLOSSIAor writer, that is, being monologic.

HETEROGLOSSIA

POLYPHONY

CARNIVAL

Mikhail BakhtinBakhtin censures linguistics, and the work of Saussure in particular, for separating texts from their social context, for

DIALOGISM

UNFINALIZABILITY

HETEROGLOSSIAfrom their social context, for ignoring the relationships that exist between speakers and texts.

HETEROGLOSSIA

POLYPHONY

CARNIVAL

Mikhail Bakhtin• He argues that structuralists

look only at the shape (structure) of language and ignore how people use it.

• Such thinking eventually led

DIALOGISM

UNFINALIZABILITY

HETEROGLOSSIA • Such thinking eventually led him to assert that language is always a dialogue, which consist of one speaker, one listener / respondent, and a relationship between the two.

HETEROGLOSSIA

POLYPHONY

CARNIVAL

Mikhail Bakhtin• Language for Bakhtin is the

product of the interactions between two people. It not monologic, an utterance

DIALOGISM

UNFINALIZABILITY

HETEROGLOSSIAmonologic, an utterance issuing from a single speaker or writer.

HETEROGLOSSIA

POLYPHONY

CARNIVAL

Mikhail Bakhtin• The concept of dialogism has

applications on several levels.

• From the individual, it means that because it is a language

DIALOGISM

UNFINALIZABILITY

HETEROGLOSSIAthat because it is a language that defines a person, and one utterance is always responding to other utterances, one is always in the process of becoming.

HETEROGLOSSIA

POLYPHONY

CARNIVAL

Mikhail Bakhtin• And since the individual is

always changing, nobody can be wholly understood or fully revealed.

DIALOGISM

UNFINALIZABILITY

HETEROGLOSSIArevealed.

• Bakhtin calls the condition in which people cannot be completely known as unfinalizability.

HETEROGLOSSIA

POLYPHONY

CARNIVAL

Mikhail Bakhtin• On a more general level,

dialogism sees works of literature to be in communication with each other and with other authors.

DIALOGISM

UNFINALIZABILITY

HETEROGLOSSIA and with other authors.

• One shapes the other, not just by influencing new works but by adding to the understanding of those that have preceded it as well as those that follow it.

HETEROGLOSSIA

POLYPHONY

CARNIVAL

Mikhail Bakhtin• Many different languages exist

in any single culture, and an individual uses a variety of them in any given day.

• How did the self you put

DIALOGISM

UNFINALIZABILITY

HETEROGLOSSIA• How did the self you put

forward in the different situations change with the languages you were using? How did the language both create and affect your relationship with the listener or reader?

HETEROGLOSSIA

POLYPHONY

CARNIVAL

Mikhail Bakhtin• Heteroglossia is the term

Bakhtin to refer to the interplay of the numerous forms of social speech that

DIALOGISM

UNFINALIZABILITY

HETEROGLOSSIAforms of social speech that people use as they go about their daily lives.

HETEROGLOSSIA

POLYPHONY

CARNIVAL

Mikhail Bakhtin• It refers to the manner in

which their diverse way of speaking – their differing vocabularies, accents,

DIALOGISM

UNFINALIZABILITY

HETEROGLOSSIAvocabularies, accents, expressions, and rhetorical strategies – mixed with another.

HETEROGLOSSIA

POLYPHONY

CARNIVAL

Mikhail BakhtinALOLOY

TOPAK

SHET

SHIT

DIALOGISM

UNFINALIZABILITY

HETEROGLOSSIA

“ALOLOY NIMO!”

“SHET KAAYO.”

“AYAY KA!”“DAMN,

SHIT

AYAY

YAY

DAMN

HETEROGLOSSIA

POLYPHONY

CARNIVAL “MAY TOPAK ATA YUN!”

“THAT PIECE OF SHIT.”

“OH, YAY!”

“DAMN, YOU!”

Mikhail Bakhtin• It can be described as living

language because it features multiplicity and variety; it carries suggestions of different professions, age groups, and

DIALOGISM

UNFINALIZABILITY

HETEROGLOSSIA professions, age groups, and backgrounds that intersect and shape each other, generating meaning through what he calls as “primacy of context over text.”

HETEROGLOSSIA

POLYPHONY

CARNIVAL

Mikhail Bakhtin• Bakhtin maintains that two

forces are in operation whenever language is used.

• Borrowing terms from

DIALOGISM

UNFINALIZABILITY

HETEROGLOSSIA • Borrowing terms from physics, he calls them centripetal and centrifugal them away from the centerand out in all directions.

HETEROGLOSSIA

POLYPHONY

CARNIVAL

Mikhail Bakhtin• Heteroglossic language,

according to Bakhtin, is centrifugal because of its dynamism and relativism.

DIALOGISM

UNFINALIZABILITY

HETEROGLOSSIAdynamism and relativism.

• Its opposite, monologiclanguage, is centripetal because it forces everything into a single form of statement that comes from one authority.

HETEROGLOSSIA

POLYPHONY

CARNIVAL

Mikhail Bakhtin• Monologic language

standardizes language way of speaking and writing that is pure, regimented discourse

DIALOGISM

UNFINALIZABILITY

HETEROGLOSSIApure, regimented discourse cleansed of differences that interrupt the accepted way of using language.

HETEROGLOSSIA

POLYPHONY

CARNIVAL

Mikhail Bakhtin• To apply his theories to literary

genres, Bakhtin examines poetry and the novel in particular.

• Acknowledging that poetry has

DIALOGISM

UNFINALIZABILITY

HETEROGLOSSIA• Acknowledging that poetry has

historically been the more highly valued form, he asserts that because the two genres have different purposes, they use language (create meaning) in different ways.

HETEROGLOSSIA

POLYPHONY

CARNIVAL

Mikhail Bakhtin

DIALOGISM

UNFINALIZABILITY

HETEROGLOSSIA

POETRY

• is an art form

• it has aesthetic function, does not do anything

• monologic

HETEROGLOSSIA

POLYPHONY

CARNIVALPROSE

• has a social language; it does something

• Dialogic (centrifugal)

• with it diversity of voices, it is heteroglossic

GENRE

Mikhail Bakhtin• He said that prose (novel) is

characterized by dialogizedheteroglossia.

• That is, it is composed of

DIALOGISM

UNFINALIZABILITY

HETEROGLOSSIA• That is, it is composed of

multiple experiences and worldviews in ongoing dialogue with each other, creating numerous interactions.

HETEROGLOSSIA

POLYPHONY

CARNIVAL

Mikhail Bakhtin• He celebrates the novel for its

“dialogically agitated and tension-filled environment of alien words, value judgments,

DIALOGISM

UNFINALIZABILITY

HETEROGLOSSIAalien words, value judgments, and accents” that form complex, ever shifting patterns.

HETEROGLOSSIA

POLYPHONY

CARNIVAL

Mikhail Bakhtin• Bakhtin uses the term

polyphonic to describe a novel that depicts a world in which the dialogue goes on ad infinitum without reaching a conclusion or closure.

DIALOGISM

UNFINALIZABILITY

HETEROGLOSSIAinfinitum without reaching a conclusion or closure.

• The structure is not predetermined to demonstrate the author’s worldview, nor are the characters drawn to exemplify it.

HETEROGLOSSIA

POLYPHONY

CARNIVAL

Mikhail Bakhtin• There is no central voice in

some novels, only multiple unfinalizable characters that talk about ideas in their distinctive, individual ways.

DIALOGISM

UNFINALIZABILITY

HETEROGLOSSIA distinctive, individual ways.

• They exist in each other and through each other as they interact in social circumstances.

HETEROGLOSSIA

POLYPHONY

CARNIVAL

Mikhail Bakhtin• In addition to the characters

that participate in the experience, there are author and the reader, too, who with the characters help to create

DIALOGISM

UNFINALIZABILITY

HETEROGLOSSIA the characters help to create the novel’s “truths” not simply one certain truth.

• Characters influence characters.

HETEROGLOSSIA

POLYPHONY

CARNIVAL

Mikhail Bakhtin• Readers watch as they shape

each other and listen as their utterances conflict with each other; all the while filtering

DIALOGISM

UNFINALIZABILITY

HETEROGLOSSIAother; all the while filtering the characters’ observations through their own experiences and understanding.

HETEROGLOSSIA

POLYPHONY

CARNIVAL

Quiz ½ cw

• Explain whether The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is “polyphonic” or “monological” vis-a-vis Bakhtin’s theory.

Mikhail Bakhtin• Bakhtin’s concept for a social

practice that mocks authority and reverses hierarchies.

• It challenges traditional

DIALOGISM

UNFINALIZABILITY

HETEROGLOSSIA • It challenges traditional power bases and opens the way to a new social order.

• He sees the novel as carnival-esque because

HETEROGLOSSIA

POLYPHONY

CARNIVAL

Mikhail Bakhtin• He sees the novel as carnival-

esque because it has the ability to challenge restrictive social forces, obliterate social

DIALOGISM

UNFINALIZABILITY

HETEROGLOSSIAforces, obliterate social hierarchies, and blur distinctions among social classes.

• It can reverse the traditional systems of authority and order.

HETEROGLOSSIA

POLYPHONY

CARNIVAL

Mikhail Bakhtin• The polyphonic nature of the

novel, in which the reader hears conflicting statements from many voices interacting and helping to shape others is carnivalesque.

DIALOGISM

UNFINALIZABILITY

HETEROGLOSSIAand helping to shape others is carnivalesque.

• The clash of ideas destroys any notion of regular convention, standardization, or rules, or even suggests a certain freedom of being.

HETEROGLOSSIA

POLYPHONY

CARNIVAL

Mikhail Bakhtin• Each character is individually

defined, and at the same time the reader witnesses how each is influenced by the other.

• Each one is touched by the

DIALOGISM

UNFINALIZABILITY

HETEROGLOSSIA• Each one is touched by the

others, and in turn shapes the character of the others.

• Carnival is the context in which context in which voices are singly heard but interact together.

HETEROGLOSSIA

POLYPHONY

CARNIVAL

Formalist Key Terms

• Affective fallacy

• Allusion

• Ambiguity

• Carnival

• Dialogizedheteroglossia

• Etymology

• Figure of speech • Carnival

• Connotation

• Defamiliarization

• Denotation

• Dialogism

• Figure of speech

• Heteroglossia

• Image

• Intentional Fallacy

• Irony

Formalist Key Terms

• Motifs

• Paradox

• Paraphrase

• Poetics

• Structure

• Symbol

• Tension

• Unfinalizability• Poetics

• Point of View

• Polyphony

• Russian Formalism

• Unfinalizability

• Unity

Reading as a Formalist

• The critic who wants to write about literature from a formalist perspective must be a close and careful reader who examines all the elements of a text individually and questions how they come text individually and questions how they come together to create a work of art.

• Instead of examining historical periods, author biographies, or literary styles, for example, he or she will approach a text with an assumption that it is a self-contained entity.

Reading as a Formalist

• Some of the main elements that call for attention are

form diction unityform diction unity

Reading as a Formalist• Form is the whole that is

produced by various structural elements working together.

FORM

DICTION

UNITY • Form grows out of the work’s recurrences, repetitions, relationships, motifs – all the organizational devices that create the total effect.

UNITY

Reading as a Formalist• Together they are the

statement of the work.

• Thus, form and content are inseparable.

FORM

DICTION

UNITY inseparable.

• The formalist-reader pays attention to how all the parts affect each other and how they fit together.

UNITY

Reading as a Formalist• In early readings, then, you

may find it helpful to make marginal notations where words and phrases recur.

FORM

DICTION

UNITYwords and phrases recur.

• Even if the wording is not repeated exactly, there may be synonyms that echo important words.

UNITY

Reading as a Formalist• Images too, can gain

significance by appearing more than once.

• They may be random or may

FORM

DICTION

UNITY • They may be random or may form a regular pattern, either way, they deserve to be noted because they began to create form and unity.

UNITY

Reading as a Formalist• Because the reader is given

only the information that the narrator knows, as he or she understands it and chooses to share it, the storyteller controls

FORM

DICTION

UNITYshare it, the storyteller controls the reader’s perception of the fictive world and thereby determines how the reader grasps the integral and meaningful relationship of all its parts.

UNITY

POINT OF VIEW AS A SHAPING FORCE

Reading as a Formalist• Does this work follow the

traditional form?

• How are the events of the plot recounted – for example,

FORM

DICTION

UNITYplot recounted – for example, in sequential fashion or as a flashback?

• How does the work organization affect its meaning?

UNITY

Reading as a Formalist• Does the denouement of the

plot surprise or satisfy you?

• Does the denouement provide closure to the narrative or leave it open?

FORM

DICTION

UNITY it open?

• What is the effect of telling a story in this point of view?

• What recurrences of words, images, and sounds do you notice?

UNITY

Reading as a Formalist• Do the recurrences make a

pattern, or do they appear randomly?

• Where do images foreshadow

FORM

DICTION

UNITY• Where do images foreshadow

later events?

• How does the narrator point of view shape the meaning?

• What visual patterns do you find in this text?

UNITY

Reading as a Formalist• Words hold the key to

meaning.

• A formalist would look at words closely, questioning all

FORM

DICTION

UNITYwords closely, questioning all their denotations and connotations.

• Etymology becomes significant, and allusions other works may import surprising meanings.

UNITY

Reading as a Formalist• The writer speaks of

experience, uses ambiguity to reach for meaning through language that is suggestive,

FORM

DICTION

UNITYlanguage that is suggestive, compressed and multileveled.

• When an incident or person is used both literally and figuratively, it becomes a symbol.

UNITY

Reading as a Formalist• If a work has unity, all of its

aspects fit together in significant ways that create a whole.

FORM

DICTION

UNITYwhole.

• Each element, through its relationship to the others, contributes to the totality of the work, its meaning.

UNITY

Reading as a Formalist• Unity is created, for example,

when a single image or figure of speech is extended throughout a work or when several images or figures form a pattern.

FORM

DICTION

UNITY or figures form a pattern.

• The appearance may be relatively simple reference to a color or sound or the more complicated use of figurative language (metaphor).

UNITY

Reading as a Formalist• In the most powerful works,

the elements do not come together easily or comfortably.

• The formalist critic looks for

FORM

DICTION

UNITY• The formalist critic looks for

these elements to resist one another, creating what Allen Tate called tension – the push of conflicting elements against each other.

UNITY

Reading as a Formalist• Tension appears in the form

of: IRONY – the use of a word or a

statement that is opposite of what is intended

FORM

DICTION

UNITY what is intended

PARADOX – a contradiction that is actually true

AMBIGUITY – a word, statement, or situation that has more than one possible meaning

UNITY

What Doesn’t Appear in Formalism

PARAPHRASE

INTENTION

BIOGRAPHYBIOGRAPHY

AFFECT

What Doesn’t Appear in Formalism

• If a reader accepts the principles of formalism, change to a text – whether it be in form, diction, or unifying devices – makes the

PARAPHRASE

INTENTION

BIOGRAPHY unifying devices – makes the work no longer itself.

• To restate a poem or summarize a story is to lose it.

BIOGRAPHY

AFFECT

What Doesn’t Appear in Formalism

• What an author intended to do is not important.

• What the author actually did is the reader’s concern.

PARAPHRASE

INTENTION

BIOGRAPHY is the reader’s concern. BIOGRAPHY

AFFECT

What Doesn’t Appear in Formalism

• Studying the details of an author’s life, and by extension the social and historical conditions in which

PARAPHRASE

INTENTION

BIOGRAPHYhistorical conditions in which a text was produced, may be interesting, but it does little to reveal how a poem creates meaning.

BIOGRAPHY

AFFECT

What Doesn’t Appear in Formalism

• The effect of the audience, esp on an emotional level.

PARAPHRASE

INTENTION

BIOGRAPHYBIOGRAPHY

AFFECT

IMPORTANT REMINDERS: FORMALIST PRACTICE

• Tomorrow, bring a copy of the story “The Lady with the Little Dog” by Anton Chekhov. (“The Lady with the Pet Dog” / The Lady with the Dog”) for graded recitation. BE SURE TO READ IT BEFORE COMING TO CLASS. READ IT BEFORE COMING TO CLASS.

• The first question is to point out a formalist concern in the story.

• DO NOT COME TO CLASS IF YOU HAVEN’T READ IT (OR IF YOU DON’T HAVE A COPY).

Writing a Formalist Analysis

• A common way to begin a formalist analysis is to present a summary statement about how various

INTRODUCTION

THE BODY

CONCLUSIONstatement about how various elements of the work come together to make meaning.

CONCLUSION