Russian Formalism, a significant early 20th-century movement, fundamentally reshaped how literary texts were understood and analyzed. Emerging in Russia between roughly 1915 and 1930, it challenged prevailing historical and biographical approaches by asserting that literature's essence lay not in its external context or authorial intent, but in its intrinsic formal properties and its unique mode of employing language. The Formalists argued that the specific techniques and structures of a work, rather than its thematic content or social background, were what made it distinctively literary. Their core tenets, particularly the concepts of "literariness" and "defamiliarization," provided a powerful new lens through which to examine literary art, shifting the focus from what a text said to how it said it.
Central to the Formalist project was the concept of "literariness" ( literaturnost). This term, popularized by Viktor Shklovsky, referred to the qualities that distinguished a literary text from ordinary language. For Shklovsky, literature was not simply a matter of subject matter but of language's special treatment. He famously stated in "Art as Technique" (1917) that "the purpose of art is to make us feel the things as we see them, not as we know them." This pointed to the Formalists' key idea of "defamiliarization" or "making strange" (ostranenie). They believed that habitual perception rendered the world commonplace and uninteresting. Art, through its formal devices, disrupts this automatism. For example, Leo Tolstoy's description of a dog's funeral in Kholstomer was lauded by Shklovsky not for its pathos, but for its unusual perspective. By narrating events from the viewpoint of a horse, Tolstoy forced readers to re-examine familiar social customs and human behavior, stripping them of their taken-for-granted quality. This process of seeing the familiar anew, as if for the first time, was the hallmark of artistic experience.
The Formalists meticulously cataloged and analyzed these devices. Roman Jakobson, in his early work, identified the poetic function of language as distinct from its referential or communicative functions. He argued that language in poetry is "objectified," meaning that the focus shifts from the message's content to the message itself, its form, and its sound. This led to an intense examination of elements like rhythm, meter, rhyme, alliteration, and the arrangement of words. They saw these as not mere ornamentation but as constitutive of the literary effect. Consider the intricate sound patterns in Osip Mandelstam's poetry, where assonance and consonance are not accidental but integral to the poem's emotional and structural integrity. The Formalists would argue that understanding these patterns was crucial to grasping Mandelstam's poetic meaning, rather than seeking it in his personal biography or the political climate of the 1930s.
Furthermore, Russian Formalism championed the autonomy of the literary work. They often distinguished between "plot" ( syuzhet) and "story" ( fabula). The story is the chronological sequence of events as they happened, while the plot is how those events are presented in the narrative. This distinction allowed them to analyze how authors manipulate time, introduce flashbacks, foreshadow events, or withhold information to create suspense, irony, or thematic resonance. For instance, in Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, the reader knows Raskolnikov's guilt from early on, but the fabula is structured through the unfolding investigation and Raskolnikov's psychological torment, creating a powerful syuzhet. The Formalists would see this deliberate structuring as the primary mode of conveying the novel's psychological and moral dimensions. Their focus on the "device" as the fundamental unit of literary analysis provided a systematic, almost scientific, approach to literature.
Despite their eventual suppression by the Soviet regime, the influence of Russian Formalism was profound and far-reaching. Their emphasis on form, structure, and the specific workings of language laid the groundwork for later movements such as structuralism and post-structuralism. While criticized for sometimes neglecting historical and social context, their insistence on literature's self-referential nature and its unique aesthetic qualities offered a vital corrective to earlier, less rigorous interpretive methods. By directing attention to the mechanics of literary art, the Formalists established a legacy of close reading and formal analysis that continues to inform literary studies today.