ITTOL - Lecture 7 - Russian Formalism
This lecture was a bit of a slog to get through, especially as I don't have the course text book and could not locate complete copies of the reading material. The key point, as far as I can tell, is to highlight the differences, and similarities, between Russian Formalism, New Critic Formalism and the established approach to literary history.
The Russians treat a text as autonomous, as do the New Critics, but they are not interested in the "art of interpretation" as a vehicle to arrive at meaning; rather, they are concerned with the methods literary texts use to defamiliarize or pull us up short. They see the subject matter of the text (content) as simply another literary device, on par with grammar, rhyme, sentence structure, etc. Eikhenbaum says
I think an example of how this might work is by a text making a number of direct communications about a character in order to build the character: John is tall with thin shoulders and long arms. His hair is brown, limp, neither long nor short. His nose twitches when he is offended by a word, a smell, a sight or a noise. From these direct communications of the character's attributes we create an independent value |John| distinct from other characters in the text or any other particular John.
In a more generic sense, we can say a character has attributes or that a particular set of attributes constitutes a separate independent value, a character. An attribute, set of attributes, character are all patterns or devices that can be identified and related, individually or in combination, to other devices in the text. And each device can arise independently within the text, there is no set formula to describe how they must be built and combined. At least, this is how I understand what Eikhenbaum and Jakubinsky have said.
Formalists, in general, have a problem with Symbolists and their subjective methods. Roman Jakobson accused literary historians of "creating a conglomeration of homespun disciplines" using "anthropology, psychology, politics, and philosophy"; in other words, they tended to borrow and apply principles from other established fields and failed to create a separate, unified literary discipline founded on an empirical examination of historical literary texts.
This approach strikes me as more than the difference between form and content or Hirsch`s meaning and significance, Foucault's and Barthes' author and reader. In fact, the author and readers may be simply seen as devices in and of themselves! It`s as if the Russian Formalists are saying first, identify exactly what we have before us; only then can you begin to look at how the various devices function within the text; and, more importantly, there is no reason to prefer one device or function over another; no reason to prefer the author over the reader, the psychological over the political, the philosophical over the anthropological.
The dominant function (what motivates the text?), in theory, should reveal itself through objective examination. Only then can we begin to talk rationally about form, meaning or significance. Only then can we see the real ebb and flow, the evolution, of literary history.
The Russians treat a text as autonomous, as do the New Critics, but they are not interested in the "art of interpretation" as a vehicle to arrive at meaning; rather, they are concerned with the methods literary texts use to defamiliarize or pull us up short. They see the subject matter of the text (content) as simply another literary device, on par with grammar, rhyme, sentence structure, etc. Eikhenbaum says
In principle the question for the Formalist is not how to study literature, but what the subject matter of literary study actually is.Like the New Critics, the Russian Formalists believe their approach to be a scientific one; according to Eikhenbaum they "focus on the empirical study of the material" (the material facts?) They are not trying to define hard and fast methods of interpretation but a set of principles that will allow them to identify the various materials or devices within the text that make it literature. Their approach is scientific (empirical) and open ended i.e. the set of principles may change as new ones are discovered and old ones revised or dropped. They approach a text the way a linguist approaches language: how is it structured? what are its parts (devices)? how do they relate to each other? Eikhenbaum talks about practical language and poetic language and he quotes from Leo Jakubinsky's essay On the Sounds of Poetic Language
The phenomena of language must be classified from the point of view of the speaker’s particular purpose as he forms his own linguistic pattern. If the pattern is formed for the purely practical purpose of communication, then we are dealing with a system of practical language (the language of thought) in which the linguistic pattern (sounds, morphological features, etc.) have no independent value and are merely a means of communication. But other linguistic systems, systems in which the practical purpose is in the background (although perhaps not entirely hidden) are conceivable; they exist, and their linguistic patterns acquire independent value .From this it would seem that there can be two or more levels to a text; on one level, the language is being used for the practical purpose of direct communication while on another level the language may be forming patterns which act as background or indirect communication; in which case, the language patterns (devices?) can exist independently(?).
I think an example of how this might work is by a text making a number of direct communications about a character in order to build the character: John is tall with thin shoulders and long arms. His hair is brown, limp, neither long nor short. His nose twitches when he is offended by a word, a smell, a sight or a noise. From these direct communications of the character's attributes we create an independent value |John| distinct from other characters in the text or any other particular John.
In a more generic sense, we can say a character has attributes or that a particular set of attributes constitutes a separate independent value, a character. An attribute, set of attributes, character are all patterns or devices that can be identified and related, individually or in combination, to other devices in the text. And each device can arise independently within the text, there is no set formula to describe how they must be built and combined. At least, this is how I understand what Eikhenbaum and Jakubinsky have said.
Formalists, in general, have a problem with Symbolists and their subjective methods. Roman Jakobson accused literary historians of "creating a conglomeration of homespun disciplines" using "anthropology, psychology, politics, and philosophy"; in other words, they tended to borrow and apply principles from other established fields and failed to create a separate, unified literary discipline founded on an empirical examination of historical literary texts.
This approach strikes me as more than the difference between form and content or Hirsch`s meaning and significance, Foucault's and Barthes' author and reader. In fact, the author and readers may be simply seen as devices in and of themselves! It`s as if the Russian Formalists are saying first, identify exactly what we have before us; only then can you begin to look at how the various devices function within the text; and, more importantly, there is no reason to prefer one device or function over another; no reason to prefer the author over the reader, the psychological over the political, the philosophical over the anthropological.
The dominant function (what motivates the text?), in theory, should reveal itself through objective examination. Only then can we begin to talk rationally about form, meaning or significance. Only then can we see the real ebb and flow, the evolution, of literary history.