Formalist criticism is the first of the series of literary critic

Welcome Future Literary Critics! This topic Formalist criticism is your first on the series of literary criticisms we are going to undertake in the course Literary criticism. We are going to study the short story entitled Araby written by James Joyce from his short story collection entitled Dubliners. The copy of which is available for download here. We will read it as a formalist critic do and then we will write a formalist criticism of your chosen short story. So, hang on and together, let us learn how to critique a particular literary piece following the Formalist criticism approach. Enjoy!

Intended learning outcomes

By the completion of this lesson, the students should be able to:

Explain formalist criticism;
Discuss the gist of the short story “Araby”;
Write a formalist criticism of a chosen short story.

What is Formalist criticism?

Formalist criticism is defined as a literary criticism approach which provides readers with a way to understand and enjoy a work for its own inherent value as a piece of literary art. Formalist critics spend a great deal of time analyzing irony, paradox, imagery, and metaphor. They are also interested in a work’s setting, characters, symbols, and point of view.

Broadly, it is concerned exclusively with the text in isolation from the world, author, or reader.

Specifically, the Russian Formalism focused on literariness of texts, defamiliarization, material & device, story & plot, and narrative voice; while the New Criticism focused on the text as an object that can be analyzed independent of the author, world, or reader.

What isn’t formalist criticism?

It does not treat the text as an expression of social, religious, or political ideas; neither does it reduce the text to being a promotional effort for some cause or belief.
Those who practice formalism claim they do not view works through the lens of feminism, psychology, Marxism, or any other philosophical standpoint.
They are also uninterested in the work’s effect on the reader.

Other names of formalist criticism

Russian Formalism
New Criticism
Aesthetic criticism
Textual criticism
Ontological criticism
Modernism
Formalism
Practical criticism

Historical background

Precursors

Aristotle focused on the “elements” with which a work is composed.
The Romantics stressed organic unity from imaginations’ “esemplastic” power.
Poe extolled the “singleness of effect” in poetry & fiction.
James made the same case for fiction as “organic form.”

British practitioners

I. A. Richards
William Empson
F.R. Leavis

American practitioners

W.K. Wimsatt
Allen Tate
Robert Penn Warren
Richard Blackmur
Cleanth Brooks
John Crowe Ransom

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge is an English poet, literary critic and philosopher. With his friend William Wordsworth, he founded the Romantic Movement in England. He is one of the three “Lake Poets.” His most celebrated work is the poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”

He believes that “the spirit of poetry must embody in order to reveal itself.”
Form to him is not simply the visible, external shape of literature. It was something “organic,” “innate.”
“It shapes as it develops itself from within, the fullness of its development is one and the same with the perfection of its outward form. Such is life, such the form!”

New criticism

New criticism is a form of formalist formed as a reaction to the prevalent attention that scholars and teachers in the early part of the 20th century who paid to the biographical and historical context of a work thereby diminishing the attention given to the literature itself.
Informally began in 1920s at Vanderbilt University in discussions among John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn Warren, Allen Tate, Cleanth Brooks.
They published a literary magazine called The Fugitive for three years.
They influenced writers and theorists abroad such as T.S. Eliot, I.A. Richards, and William Empson.
Practice of close-reading the text
Practice of appreciation of order
Asserts that understanding a work comes from looking at it as a self-sufficient object with formal elements
To know how a work creates meaning became the quest

T.S. Eliot

T.S. Eliot’s full name is Thomas Stearns Eliot. He is an essayist, publisher, playwright, literary and social critic. He is one of the twentieth century’s major poets. He penned famous poems such as “The Waste Land” and “The Hollow Men.”

He proposed the idea called “objective correlative” which tells how emotion is expressed in art.
“A set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion…”
“When external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience; are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.”

Russian formalism

Its practitioners were influenced by Ferdinand de Saussure (French linguist and literary critic).
They believe that literature is a systematic set of linguistic and structural elements that can be analyzed.
They saw literature as a self-enclosed system that can be studied not for its content but for its form.
Form was more important than the content.

Viktor Shklovsky

Viktor Shklovsky is a member of the Russian formalism movement. Shklovsky is perhaps best known for developing the concept of “ostranenie” or defamiliarization (also translated as “estrangement”) in literature. He explained this concept in the important essay “Art as Technique” (also translated as “Art as Device”) which comprised the first chapter of his seminal ”Theory of Prose,” first published in 1925.

He argued for the need to turn something that has become over-familiar, like a cliché in the literary canon, into something revitalized.

“The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects ‘unfamiliar’, to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object; the object is not important.” (Shklovsky, “Art as Technique“)

Reading as a Formalist critic

Do’s:

Must first be a close or careful reader who examines all the elements of a text individually
Questions how they come together to create a work of art
Respects the autonomy of work
Achieves understanding of it by looking inside it, not outside or beyond
Allow the text to reveal itself
The text is a self-contained entity
Analyze how the elements work together to form unity of form.

Dont’s:

Look beyond the work by reading the author’s biography, or literary style
Examining the work’s historical background and condition of society
The text’s influences or prior similarity with other works
Take the elements distinct and separate from each other.

Important considerations

Form.
1. Look for motifs – rhyme scheme, recurrences, repetitions, relationships, patterns, images, parallelism
2. Examine the Point of View – (prosody) the narrator: personality, understanding, presentation, attitude
3. Scrutinize the structure – plot (chronological), conflict (surface-subsurface)
4. Development of form – similarities and differences
Diction.
1. Look for denotation/connotation – allusions, etymology, synonyms
2. Examine the symbols – objects, artifacts, events, actions, images
3. Follow the work’s unity – how do elements conspire?
Unity.
1. Follow the work’s unity – how do elements conspire?
2. Watch out for tensions – the conflict of these elements
3. Analyze the figures of speech – ambiguity, irony, paradox, etc.

What doesn’t appear in Formalist criticism

Paraphrasing. Any change to a text – whether in form, diction, or unifying devices – makes the work no longer itself.
1. To restate a poem or summarize or summarize a story is to lose it.
2. Its uniqueness disappears.
3. Any alteration of wording or structure or point of view changes the meaning of the original and cannot, therefore, be valid.
Intention. The author’s intention in writing the piece is not important, but what the author did is the main concern.
1. To indulge concern about what he (author) had planned to do is to commit Intentional fallacy.
2. Intentional fallacy refers to the belief that the meaning of a work may be determined by the author’s intention.
3. Even if the intention of the author is obvious, it may not have been carried out.
Biography. Biography is the study of author’s life, and by extension, social and historical conditions in which the work was written, does little to reveal how a work creates meaning.
1. The work is not the writer, nor is the writer the work.
Affect. As readers digress by paying attention to other things, they can also go astray by paying attention to their own reaction to the work.
1. By asking the work’s effect on the reader or audience, they shift their attention to results rather than the work itself.
2. Such activity will lead to affective fallacy.
3. Affective fallacy refers to the belief that the meaning or value of a work may be determined by its affect on the reader.

Writing a Formalist criticism

Prewriting

Revisit your reading log or marginal notation.
See how the keywords are woven together.
Revisit the text and look for:
1. patterns,
2. recurrences,
3. visual motifs,
4. repeated words and phrases for meaning;
5. unity – meaningful coherence of the elements
6. tension – identify the effects produced by paradox and irony.
Start free writing about what you have read and begin with:
1. a symbol
2. a strong image
3. a particular element
4. a reaction or
5. an observation

Drafting and revising

Introduction. Present a summary statement about how various elements work together to make a whole. Continue with the draft of your introduction. Alternately, begin by directly referencing the text itself by:
1. Recount a meaningful incident from a story or
2. Quote a few lines from the poem
3. Then explain why such incident or lines are important to understanding the text as a whole.
Body. The body of your work hows how your paper will be devoted to showing how the various elements of the text work together to create meaning. You must:
1. Cite examples on how the form, diction, and unity operate together to develop a theme
2. Observe unity, emphasis and coherence in detailing your examples
3. Focus on the literary elements rather than the plot or sequence of the story or the stanza of the poem.
Conclusion. State or reiterate the connection between form and content. Generalize about the over-all relationship of form and content. End your composition with a lasting impression by:
1. Giving a generalization or conclusion
2. Rhetorical question
3. Strong conviction

“That’s for the lecture. We will use the short story “Araby” as our spring board text, hence, you are expected to read it three times using the guidelines presented here.

In our class, we will put these theories into action. Message me if you have concerns by clicking here.

References

Dobie, Ann B. (2009). Theory into Practice: An Intro to Literary Criticism. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
Fry, Paul H. (2013). Theory of Literature. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Habib, M. R. (2011). A History of Literary Criticism: From Plato to Present. UK: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing.
Images courtesy of google images

Formalist criticism