Russian Formalism (Item)

Russian Formalism — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 19:33:06 -0500

Russian formalism was an influential 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, Grigory Vinokur who revolutionised 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 structuralist and post-structuralist 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 endeavours. In fact, "Russian Formalism" describes two distinct movements: the OPOJAZ Obshchestvo Izucheniia Poeticheskogo Yazyka - Society for the Study of Poetic Language in St. Petersburg and the Linguistic Circle in Moscow. 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."\[1\]
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Vladimir Propp (Theorist)

Vladimir Propp — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 19:30:03 -0500

Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp was a Russian and USSR Formalism (literature) scholar who analyzed the basic plot components of Russian folk tales to identify their simplest irreducible narrative elements.
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Ostranenie (Term)

Ostranenie — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 08:57:04 -0500

Defamiliarization or ostranenie (остранение) is the artistic technique of forcing the audience to see common things in an unfamiliar or strange way, in order to enhance perception of the familiar. A basic satirical tactic, it is a central concept of 20th century art, ranging over movements including Dada, postmodernism, epic theatre, and science fiction.
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This is similar to Viktor Shklovsky (Theorist) - Moscow, Russia - ThisIsLike.com

Russian Formalism (Item)

Vladimir Propp (Theorist)

Ostranenie (Term)