Russian formalist

1. By Jessika Bravo.

2. Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky Pioneer.

3. •Shklovsky and other Formalists offered a theory
of: Literary function, critical interpretation and
art’s purpose.
•Emphasized form and structure in literature over
content.
•They viewed literature as collections of devices
that interact in a textual field.
•The purpose of literary art is estrangement.

4. •Schlovsky confronts mostly Potebnya’s aesthetic theory.
•“Without imagery there is no art, and in particular no
poetry”

•Instead he defines a field of literary activity in which
linguistically based devices create a more complex
experience.
•Poets are more centered on arranging images instead of
creating them.

5. •Imagery does not include all the aspects of art and its
change do not necessarily develop poetry.
•“By works of art, in the narrow sense, we mean works
created by special techniques designed to make the
works as obviously artistic as possible”

•Schklovsky wanted to stress that poetic imagery “is a
means of creating the strongest possible impression”

6. Habitualization
Many processes in our daily life are
unconscious, the idea of art making objects
unfamiliar to increase perception, “Art is a
way of experiencing the artfulness of an
object; the object is not important”

7. Defamiliarization
•Leo Tolstoy did not name the familiar object
but described it as if he were seeing it for the
first time, in this way he “pricking the
conscience” made the familiar unfamiliar.
•The defamiliarization technique is applied by
many writers. For example to describe in
literature the sexual act or the sexual organs.

8. •The purpose of the imagery by “transfer the usual
perception of an object into a new perception”
•“Poetic Language gives satisfaction… it must appear
strange and wonderful; and, in fact, it is often actually
foreign”
•“the rhythm of prose is an important automatizing
element; the rhythm of poetry is not”

9. •Con Davies, R. and Schleifer, R. (1994). Contemporary Literary
Criticism. Literary and Cultural Studies. New York and London:
Longman. (pp. 260-272)