Readings in Russian Poetics: Formalist and Structuralist Views - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0262130696 ISBN 13: 9780262130691

Publisher: MIT Press, 1971

Synopsis

The Formal method is a code of literary criticism, having its analogues in other than verbal arts, which arose in Russia shortly before the 1920s. Part of a larger momentum which in general turned away from theory as a means to understanding art, as for instance, did scholarship in the fine arts in Germany, the Formalists undertook to establish literary study on a new, specific basis. They wished to limit themselves to the actual instance of art in front of them, and to bring to it only such materials as would an empirical investigator; theirs was, in the words of a spokesman, "a special scientific discipline concerned with literature as a specific system of facts." In this system they wished to discover the defining features: what is it in a work of literature that makes it specifically a literary work?

These are the issues raised by the Formalists. The subsequent history of their movement is an elaboration of this theoretical ground. Examples of Formalist thinking from the movement's origins through its major redefinitions and most significant expansions show much of the notable work that has been done in furthering the cause of literary studies as a systematic discipline. This volume is a collection of the most important contributions concerning the Formalist school, most of them translated for the first time from the Russian or the Czech. The editors have included articles on the general literary theory, on problems in the study of poetry, on selected problems in prose, and on specific literary works (including some by Dickens and O. Henry). The contributors include B. M. Ejxenbaum, Roman Jakobson, M. M. Baxtin, V. N. Volosinov, and others. In addition, the editors have each contributed retrospective and summarizing articles.

About this title

Review

"A valuable contribution to the understanding of an exceptionally influential critical movement."--Prairie Schooner

About the Author

Ladislav Matejka is the editor of the all ten books in the annual Cross Currents series, a yearbook of Central European culture, as well as the collection of essays entitled Semiotics in Art. Krystyna Pomorska has written, contributed to and edited numerous books on Slavic literature and prose, including Fifty Years of Russian Prose and Language in Literature. George L. Burns is professor of English at the University of Notre Dame. His acclaimed books of theory and criticism include: Heidegger's Estrangements, Inventions, and Modern Poetry and the Idea of Language.

Edition details

• Publisher: MIT Press
• Publication date: 1971
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0262130696
• ISBN 13: 9780262130691
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272
• Editor: Matejka Ladislav, Pomorska Krystyna