Differences between russian formalism and new criticism pdf

Russian Formalism and New Criticism isKey TermsDefinitionsForma genre or literary type (the lyric form, the drama form); the principle that determines how a work is organized; a work’s shaping principleLiterary Devicestechniques (e.g., allusion, allegory, metaphor, simile, rhythm, imagery, language, structure, sound, paradox, denotation
connotation) used to convey an author’s messageTropea figure of speech or a word or a phrase that is not meant to be taken literallyTonethe attitude conveyed toward a subject in a literary workParadoxa statement that initially seems to be a self-contradiction but that may prove to be true; a statement that leads to a conclusion that seems self-
contradictoryKey Terms: Dialectic; Hermeneutics; Semiotics; Text & Intertextuality; ToneHow do the work’s devices (e.g., rhythm, imagery, language, structure, sound, paradox, denotation, connotation, allusion, etc.) enhance meaning?Does the work contain any paradoxes? If so, how do they complicate, create, or enhance meaning?What is the tone
of the work? What formal elements reveal the tone? How does tone contributeRussian Formalism locates its origins in Russia in the early years of the twentieth century. New Criticism began in the 1930s and 1940s, in Great Britain and in the United States. This approach ignores the author, his or her biography, and historical context, focusing on the
literary work, which they uphold as autonomous. For a Formalist, there’s nothing outside the work that can have any bearing on the work itself. Criticism that adopts this approach analyzes how the elements and devices (e.g., words, plot, characters, images, tone) in a literary text contribute to its meaning.Formalist critics ignore the author, his or her
biography, and historical context, focusing on the literary work, which they uphold as autonomous. As Jonathan Culler explains in Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction, the Russian Formalists of the early years of the twentieth century stressed that critics should concern themselves with the literariness of literature, the verbal strategies that
contribute to the form of a literary text, and the emphasis on language that literature itself invites (122). Roman Jakobson, Boris Eichenbaum, and Viktor Shklovsky oriented literary studies toward questions of form and technique. T.S. Eliot, I.A. Richards, and William Empson significantly influenced the Anglo-American tradition of Formalism.New
Criticism and its seminal figures, including Cleanth Brooks, John Crowe Ransom, and W.K. Wimsatt, borrowed some of the methodologies of Russian Formalism. The New Critics also resisted emphasizing the author’s biography, focusing instead on how the parts of a literary text contribute to the whole. These two schools cannot be conflated,
however. Russian Formalism locates its origins in Russia in the early years of the twentieth century. New Criticism began in the 1930s and 1940s, in Great Britain and in the United States.Criticism that adopts an approach espoused by either the schools of Russian Formalism or New Criticism analyzes how the elements and devices (e.g., words, plot,
characters, images, tone) in a literary text contribute to its meaning. Consider Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s narrative poem “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” which narrates the tale of a sea mariner who kills an albatross and then experiences intense guilt before he finds redemption. The imagery that appears in the poem after the Mariner kills the
albatross is unnatural: “Day after day, day after day / We stuck, ne breath ne motion / As idle as a painted Ship / Upon a painted ocean” (2.111-114). The unnatural imagery creates a visual depiction of the Mariner’s guilt—as if he is stuck thinking about the fact that he killed the albatross.
The language of the poem creates an additional image that enhances the audience’s awareness of the Mariner’s guilt: “Ah wel-a-day ! what evil looks / Had I from old and young; / Instead of the Cross the Albatross / About my neck was hung” (2.135-38). The “hung” albatross serves as the ultimate symbol of the mariner’s guilt, as if the albatross is
haunting the Mariner. “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is a narrative poem, so Coleridge has to rely on language—in these examples words with negative connotations (“stuck,” “idle,” and “evil”) and words that create images (the idle ship and the hung albatross)—to show how guilty the Mariner feels after killing the albatross. Critics who use an
approach from the schools of either the Russian Formalists or the New Critics thus focus on elements and devices within the literary text in order to analyze how they create meaning.Online Examples: Evidence of the New Orthodoxy: Sound in William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, A Formalist Reading of Sandra Cisneros’s ‘Woman Hollering Creek” by
Skylar Hamilton BurrisDiscussion Questions and Activities: Russian Formalism and New CriticismDefine the following terms without looking at the article or your notes: form, literary devices, trope, tone, paradox.Define both Formalist Criticism and New Criticism in your own words.Review the types of literary devices, and view an additional list of
figures of speech.

Then, read Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy.” What formal elements and literary devices appear frequently in this poem (e.g., images, rhyme scheme, repetition, and metaphor)? Identify and list these elements and devices.Choose one of the formal elements or literary devices you listed above. Write a paragraph about how that element or device contributes to
the meaning of the poem.Compare and contrast two of the literary devices that Plath employs in “Daddy.” Write a paragraph in which you take a stance regarding which device contributes more significantly to the meaning of the poem. What are the main differences between Russian formalism and New Criticism? I have searched a lot but can only
find similarities. One key difference between Russian formalism and New Criticism is that the New Critics examined literary language as a way to explain or illuminate the artistic value of the text, whereas the Formalists looked at literary language to understand how, in linguistic terms, it produced meaning. Russian formalism was a critical school
which, as the name suggests, emphasized form over content and attempted to study literature as a linguistic phenomenon based on quasi-scientific principles. New Criticism was pioneered by a more loosely affiliated group of critics who did not at first consciously identify as a school and who did not even have a name for the principles they espoused
until the influential critic John Crowe Ransom titled one of his books The New Criticism. The New Critics were interested in both form and content and generally favored close reading of individual texts alongside, or sometimes instead of, the more general Russian formalist theories of what constitutes "literariness." Besides an emphasis on close
reading which is not found in Russian formalism, the New Critics were particularly interested in the concept of ambiguity in literary texts, as outlined in William Empson's 1930 study Seven Types of Ambiguity. They concentrated on the subtleties that could be drawn out of complex texts by focusing on ambiguities. The Russian Formalists had a more
mechanistic technique. Viktor Shklovsky introduced the central concept of defamiliarization, in which the aim is to set aside what the reader already knows about the text and view it with new eyes, regarding a work of literature as something to be discovered afresh from first principles. Approved by eNotes Editorial Team Russian formalism and New
Criticism are very similar. Both purport to be scientific and rigorous in their analyses of texts. Both sever the text from the biography of the author and its social context. Both are primarily interested in studying the words on the page in isolation from other inputs. New Critics, however, focused more on understanding the content or the overall
meaning of a work of literature than the Russian Formalists. The New Critics wanted to brush away biography and history in order to get a clearer understanding of what a work of literature really meant when encountered on its own. They believed that an author's biography, for example, could get in the way of understanding what a text was saying
or divert attention from a text to an author. The Russian Formalists, however, were less interested in the content of a work or its over all meaning and more interested in focusing on the specific techniques literary writers used to make their works "literary." What, specifically, made a literary text different from a newspaper article or a scientific
paper? How did literary authors achieve the effect of what the formalists called "defamiliarization," or making language sound stunning or different from the ordinary? The New Critics were also very interested in literary techniques but were more focused on using them to illuminate the meaning or content of a work. One way to understand this is to
see the Russian formalist as wanting to dissect the "frog" of its text into component parts: the bones would go in one pile, the skin in another, and so on: they weren't particularly concerned with keeping the "frog" as a whole. The New Critics would open up the "frog" of the text and study its component parts but want to keep it together, maybe pinned
to a board, so that by understanding the parts, you could understand the frog as a whole. Approved by eNotes Editorial Team A key difference between formalism and New Criticism are the ideologies they embody. While both critical schools embrace the text as the "source" of artistic expression, their ideological ends for doing so are quite different.
For instance, both New Criticism and formalism saw literary language as distinct from everyday speech. For the New Critics, this became to basis for asserting that literary expression was somehow "better," or more sophisticated, and that literature—or, more precisely, that the readers of that literature literature had access to a superior and
exclusive kind of aesthetic beauty. This elitism found expression in the rise of the "canon," or the list of "approved" literary works deemed by academics as worth studying. These texts were viewed as worth reading because they used language in a self-consciously artistic way to produce beauty. A good example of this approach is Cleanth Brooks's
study of Keats, The Well Wrought Urn.

Russian formalism also saw literary language as a unique form of discourse, but rather than asserting its aesthetic superiority, the formalists were more interested in the ways in which it differed from everyday speech and in explaining how it worked in linguistic terms. Their end, in other words, was not to appreciate the "beauty" of the text, but to
demonstrate, scientifically, how the language of the text produced meaning. In essence, where the New Critics saw the text as a work of art, the Formalists saw the text as a kind of machine. Approved by eNotes Editorial Team As you correctly note, Russian Formalism and New Criticism have many similarities, as both are part of the early twentieth-
century formalist movement. In both schools of thought, the text itself is paramount and is studied independently of its context or author's intent. Literary language is thought of as distinct from ordinary language, and the form and structure of the text are considered to provide more meaning than the content itself. These schools of criticism are most
commonly applied to poetry and encourage very close reading. However, there are several distinct differences between the two schools of thought. In Russian Formalism, a differentiation is made between form and content, whereas New Criticism does not make such a differentiation, maintaining that texts are unified through their patterns, literary
devices, themes, etc. Russian Formalism also affords some importance to the text's language and structure, whereas New Criticism considers a text to be completely self-contained, autonomous of its fabric. Furthermore, in Russian Formalism, a process called "dematerialization" was privileged, wherein reality of fact is created through the use of
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