Formalism

Analyzing Writing Craft

• Formalism is sometimes called New Criticism
(or Practical Criticism, Close Reading, or Text
Explication).
• Ignoring any cultural or historical context, any
biographical background on an author, any
political or philosophical implications, and any
moral or psychological dynamics, the formalist
is more interested in simply taking a text
apart to see how it works
• The focus of this criticism is the way the
components of language (formal elements)
• diction, syntax, rhyme and meter, symbols,
metaphors, allusions, uses of point of view, and so
forth
• How does this text achieve its effects?
• The formalist strategy for answering that question
is a careful scanning of the text, a detailed analysis
often called close reading.
• In close reading,
• one examines a piece of literature closely,
• seeking to understand its structure,
• looking for patterns that shape the work and
connect its parts to the whole,
• and searching for uses of language that contribute
to the effect.
• Formalism encourages close, attentive
reading. This kind of rigorous analysis can
sharpen readers’ critical reading and thinking
skills.
• Formalism demands textual evidence to back
up assertions, which reinforces a central
characteristic of all effective persuasion.
The Methodology of Close
Reading

• 1. Read the text once to get an overall

impression.
• 2. Read the text again, more carefully this
time, and annotate the text.
• Annotating is the fancy term for underlining,
highlighting.
• Noting in some way key words, phrases, or passages
you locate that seem important, surprising,
bewildering, compelling, significant, or question
raising.
• 3. Now examine the key passages, words, or
phrases you have annotated.
• 4. Formulate a statement that attempts to
answer a couple of your questions about what
you’ve noticed.
• 5. Now you’re ready to write an essay with
this statement as a focus.
A List of Literary Terms

• Diction,
• Denotation, connotation
• Syntax,
• Imagery,
• looks (visual imagery), sounds
(auditory imagery), feels to the
sense of touch (tactile
imagery) or motion (kinetic
or kinesthetic imagery),
smells (olfactory imagery),
or tastes (gustatory
imagery).
• Symbolism
• Tone
• passionate, concerned, amused, angry, delighted, neutral, detached,
critical, serious, sentimental
• Point of view
• Literary devices: figurative language
• Personification, simile, metaphor, irony, etc.
• Fictional devices
• Plot, setting, character, theme,
• Poetic devices
• Meter, rhyme
• Victor Shklovsky
• “art as device” 1917
• Roman Jakobson
• USA
• Formalist criticism aims to explore what is
specifically literary (literariness) in texts.
• They distinguish literary text and non-literary text
• Formalism focuses to treat literature as a
special use of language which achieves its
distinctness by deviating from and distorting
‘practical’ (non literary) language.
• Practical language is used for communication (to
convey information), while literary language is
made to make the reader see differently.
• Literary language  rhythm, has its aim in itself
(autotelic)
• Everyday language tends to make as transparent as
possible
• Poetical language acts against automatization.
• deautomatization/defamiliarization
Concept in formalist criticism

• Defamiliarization, laying bare, alienation

effect
• Plot (sjuzet) and story (fabula)
• Story --> chronological form; sjuzet  way of
telling the story
• The interpretation becomes the second part
• In one moment, something can be put in an
unfamiliar and shocking experience for those who see
it in first time  something new. Later, after some
period time, it becomes familiar.
• In one moment, something can be put in an
unfamiliar and shocking experience for those
who see it in first time  something new.
Later, after some period time, it becomes
familiar.