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TRANSCRIPT
“Poetry does not inhere in any particular element but depends upon the set of relationships, the upon the set of relationships, the structure, which we call the poem.”
Robert Penn Warren: “Pure and Impure Poetry”
Key Terms
• Affective fallacy
• Allusion
• Ambiguity
• Carnival
• Dialogizedheteroglossia
• Etymology
• Figure of speech • Carnival
• Connotation
• Defamiliarization
• Denotation
• Dialogism
• Figure of speech
• Heteroglossia
• Image
• Intentional Fallacy
• Irony
Key Terms
• Motifs
• Paradox
• Paraphrase
• Poetics
• Structure
• Symbol
• Tension
• Unfinalizability• Poetics
• Point of View
• Polyphony
• Russian Formalism
• Unfinalizability
• Unity
Formalism
• Sometimes called New Criticism, Aesthetic or Textual Criticism (because of its concerns)
• For decades, people learned to read, analyze, and appreciate literature using this approach, and appreciate literature using this approach, making it one of the most influential methods of literary analysis that the twentieth-century readers encountered.
Formalism
• Its sustained popularity among readers comes primarily from the fact that it provides them a way to understand and enjoy a work for its own inherent value as a piece of literary art.own inherent value as a piece of literary art.
• Emphasizes close reading of the work itself.
• Puts focus on the text as literature.
• Does not treat the text as an expression of social, religious, or political ideas.
Formalism
• As a result, formalism makes those who apply its principles and follow its processes better, more discerning readers.
Formalism: Historical Background
• Any new school of criticism is both an offspring of those that have preceded it and a reaction against them.
• The New Criticism, with its emphasis on unity • The New Criticism, with its emphasis on unity and form, is the direct descendant of the aesthetic theories of the romantic poets
Formalism: Historical Background
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge believed that the spirit of poetry must “embody in order to reveal itself; but the connection of parts as a whole, so each part is at
• Form, according to him was not simply the visible, external shape of literature.
• It was something “organic”, “innate”. a whole, so each part is at
once end and means!”“organic”, “innate”.
• “It shapes as it develops itself from within, and the fullness of its development is one and the same with the perfection of its outward form.”
New Criticism
• New Criticism was a formalist movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. It emphasized close reading, 20th century. It emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of literature functioned as a self-contained, self-referential aesthetic object.
The New Criticism: Historical Background
• The New Criticism was more directly a reaction against the attention of the scholars and teachers in the early part of the 20th
century paid to the biographical and historical century paid to the biographical and historical context of a work, thereby diminishing the attention given to the literature itself.
The New Criticism: Historical Background
• Instead of dealing directly with a poem, for example, the previous generation’s critics were likely to treat it as a sociological or historical record. historical record.
The New Criticism
• A theory in literature that would have a reader understand the value of its work for its own inherent work, not for its service to metaliterary matters. metaliterary matters.
THE NEW CRITICS
• John Crowe Ransom
• Robert Penn Warren
• Allen Tate
AUTHORS THEY STUDIES
• T.S. Eliot
• I.A. Richards
• William Empson• Allen Tate
• Donald Davidson
• Cleanth Brooks
• William Empson
The New Critics
• Were influenced by T.S. Eliot explanation of how emotion is expressed in art. He called it objective correlative – “a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.”
The New Criticism
• The critics went on to develop a sense of importance of form, their practice emphasizing on the close reading of texts and appreciation of order. appreciation of order.
• It asserted that understanding a work comes from looking at it as a self-sufficient object with formal elements, laws of its own that could be studied.
Russian Formalism
• Different from the New Critics
• Formed in Moscow and St. Petersburg in the 1920s.
• Two separate schools • Two separate schools
Russian Formalism
• Literature should be understood and should be studied in a scientific manner.
• Their focus is poetics – the strategies the writers used – rather than on history, writers used – rather than on history, biography, or subject matter.
Russian Formalism
• The works of the Russian Formalists was based on the theories of Ferdinand de Saussure, the French linguist.
• Saussure’s influence is seen in the Russian • Saussure’s influence is seen in the Russian formalist’s argument 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.
Russian Formalists
• They asserted that everyday language is just that; everyday or ordinary.
• Literary language is different.
• It deviates from the expected, using all the • It deviates from the expected, using all the devices an author has the power to manipulate to make what is familiar seem strange and familiar.
Russian Formalist: Viktor Shklovsky
• Coined the term defamiliarization to refer to the literary process that gives vitality to language that might otherwise be all too predictable.
• Defamiliarization is the artful aspect of a work that makes the reader alert and active; it causes the reader to intensify the attention paid to the text, to look again at an image in an effort to take in the unexpected.
Russian Formalism
• Distinction between story (fibula / fabula) and plot (sjuzhet)
• Story – refers to the actual sequence of events in a narrative in a narrative
• Plot – refers to the artistic presentation, which can jumble the sequence, repeat episodes, or include surprises
Russian Formalism
• In 1930, the Soviet government forced the Russian formalists to disband because they were unwilling to treat literature as an expression of Soviet ideology.
• Some of the leading proponents moved to Prague, where they continued their work.
• Eventually, the two of them, Roman Jakobsonand Rene Wellek, emigrated to America, where they met with the New Critics.
Mikhail Bakhtin
• Russian literary theorist of the 20th century; does not fit easily into any school of modern literary criticism
Key concepts discussed by Bakhtin
• Dialogism
• Unfinalizabilityliterary criticism
• Unfinalizability
• Heteroglossia
• Polyphony
• Carnival
Mikhail BakhtinKEY CONCEPT IN MIKHAIL BAKHTIN’S THEORY OF LANGUAGE
The belief that language (all
DIALOGISM
UNFINALIZABILITY
HETEROGLOSSIAThe belief that language (all forms of speech and writing) is always a dialogue consisting of at least one speaker, one listener / respondent, and a relationship between the two.
HETEROGLOSSIA
POLYPHONY
CARNIVAL
Mikhail BakhtinIt opposes the view that language is an utterance that issues from a single speaker or writer, that is, being
DIALOGISM
UNFINALIZABILITY
HETEROGLOSSIAor writer, that is, being monologic.
HETEROGLOSSIA
POLYPHONY
CARNIVAL
Mikhail BakhtinBakhtin censures linguistics, and the work of Saussure in particular, for separating texts from their social context, for
DIALOGISM
UNFINALIZABILITY
HETEROGLOSSIAfrom their social context, for ignoring the relationships that exist between speakers and texts.
HETEROGLOSSIA
POLYPHONY
CARNIVAL
Mikhail Bakhtin• He argues that structuralists
look only at the shape (structure) of language and ignore how people use it.
• Such thinking eventually led
DIALOGISM
UNFINALIZABILITY
HETEROGLOSSIA • Such thinking eventually led him to assert that language is always a dialogue, which consist of one speaker, one listener / respondent, and a relationship between the two.
HETEROGLOSSIA
POLYPHONY
CARNIVAL
Mikhail Bakhtin• Language for Bakhtin is the
product of the interactions between two people. It not monologic, an utterance
DIALOGISM
UNFINALIZABILITY
HETEROGLOSSIAmonologic, an utterance issuing from a single speaker or writer.
HETEROGLOSSIA
POLYPHONY
CARNIVAL
Mikhail Bakhtin• The concept of dialogism has
applications on several levels.
• From the individual, it means that because it is a language
DIALOGISM
UNFINALIZABILITY
HETEROGLOSSIAthat because it is a language that defines a person, and one utterance is always responding to other utterances, one is always in the process of becoming.
HETEROGLOSSIA
POLYPHONY
CARNIVAL
Mikhail Bakhtin• And since the individual is
always changing, nobody can be wholly understood or fully revealed.
DIALOGISM
UNFINALIZABILITY
HETEROGLOSSIArevealed.
• Bakhtin calls the condition in which people cannot be completely known as unfinalizability.
HETEROGLOSSIA
POLYPHONY
CARNIVAL
Mikhail Bakhtin• On a more general level,
dialogism sees works of literature to be in communication with each other and with other authors.
DIALOGISM
UNFINALIZABILITY
HETEROGLOSSIA and with other authors.
• One shapes the other, not just by influencing new works but by adding to the understanding of those that have preceded it as well as those that follow it.
HETEROGLOSSIA
POLYPHONY
CARNIVAL
Mikhail Bakhtin• Many different languages exist
in any single culture, and an individual uses a variety of them in any given day.
• How did the self you put
DIALOGISM
UNFINALIZABILITY
HETEROGLOSSIA• How did the self you put
forward in the different situations change with the languages you were using? How did the language both create and affect your relationship with the listener or reader?
HETEROGLOSSIA
POLYPHONY
CARNIVAL
Mikhail Bakhtin• Heteroglossia is the term
Bakhtin to refer to the interplay of the numerous forms of social speech that
DIALOGISM
UNFINALIZABILITY
HETEROGLOSSIAforms of social speech that people use as they go about their daily lives.
HETEROGLOSSIA
POLYPHONY
CARNIVAL
Mikhail Bakhtin• It refers to the manner in
which their diverse way of speaking – their differing vocabularies, accents,
DIALOGISM
UNFINALIZABILITY
HETEROGLOSSIAvocabularies, accents, expressions, and rhetorical strategies – mixed with another.
HETEROGLOSSIA
POLYPHONY
CARNIVAL
Mikhail BakhtinALOLOY
TOPAK
SHET
SHIT
DIALOGISM
UNFINALIZABILITY
HETEROGLOSSIA
“ALOLOY NIMO!”
“SHET KAAYO.”
“AYAY KA!”“DAMN,
SHIT
AYAY
YAY
DAMN
HETEROGLOSSIA
POLYPHONY
CARNIVAL “MAY TOPAK ATA YUN!”
“THAT PIECE OF SHIT.”
“OH, YAY!”
“DAMN, YOU!”
Mikhail Bakhtin• It can be described as living
language because it features multiplicity and variety; it carries suggestions of different professions, age groups, and
DIALOGISM
UNFINALIZABILITY
HETEROGLOSSIA professions, age groups, and backgrounds that intersect and shape each other, generating meaning through what he calls as “primacy of context over text.”
HETEROGLOSSIA
POLYPHONY
CARNIVAL
Mikhail Bakhtin• Bakhtin maintains that two
forces are in operation whenever language is used.
• Borrowing terms from
DIALOGISM
UNFINALIZABILITY
HETEROGLOSSIA • Borrowing terms from physics, he calls them centripetal and centrifugal them away from the centerand out in all directions.
HETEROGLOSSIA
POLYPHONY
CARNIVAL
Mikhail Bakhtin• Heteroglossic language,
according to Bakhtin, is centrifugal because of its dynamism and relativism.
DIALOGISM
UNFINALIZABILITY
HETEROGLOSSIAdynamism and relativism.
• Its opposite, monologiclanguage, is centripetal because it forces everything into a single form of statement that comes from one authority.
HETEROGLOSSIA
POLYPHONY
CARNIVAL
Mikhail Bakhtin• Monologic language
standardizes language way of speaking and writing that is pure, regimented discourse
DIALOGISM
UNFINALIZABILITY
HETEROGLOSSIApure, regimented discourse cleansed of differences that interrupt the accepted way of using language.
HETEROGLOSSIA
POLYPHONY
CARNIVAL
Mikhail Bakhtin• To apply his theories to literary
genres, Bakhtin examines poetry and the novel in particular.
• Acknowledging that poetry has
DIALOGISM
UNFINALIZABILITY
HETEROGLOSSIA• Acknowledging that poetry has
historically been the more highly valued form, he asserts that because the two genres have different purposes, they use language (create meaning) in different ways.
HETEROGLOSSIA
POLYPHONY
CARNIVAL
Mikhail Bakhtin
DIALOGISM
UNFINALIZABILITY
HETEROGLOSSIA
POETRY
• is an art form
• it has aesthetic function, does not do anything
• monologic
HETEROGLOSSIA
POLYPHONY
CARNIVALPROSE
• has a social language; it does something
• Dialogic (centrifugal)
• with it diversity of voices, it is heteroglossic
GENRE
Mikhail Bakhtin• He said that prose (novel) is
characterized by dialogizedheteroglossia.
• That is, it is composed of
DIALOGISM
UNFINALIZABILITY
HETEROGLOSSIA• That is, it is composed of
multiple experiences and worldviews in ongoing dialogue with each other, creating numerous interactions.
HETEROGLOSSIA
POLYPHONY
CARNIVAL
Mikhail Bakhtin• He celebrates the novel for its
“dialogically agitated and tension-filled environment of alien words, value judgments,
DIALOGISM
UNFINALIZABILITY
HETEROGLOSSIAalien words, value judgments, and accents” that form complex, ever shifting patterns.
HETEROGLOSSIA
POLYPHONY
CARNIVAL
Mikhail Bakhtin• Bakhtin uses the term
polyphonic to describe a novel that depicts a world in which the dialogue goes on ad infinitum without reaching a conclusion or closure.
DIALOGISM
UNFINALIZABILITY
HETEROGLOSSIAinfinitum without reaching a conclusion or closure.
• The structure is not predetermined to demonstrate the author’s worldview, nor are the characters drawn to exemplify it.
HETEROGLOSSIA
POLYPHONY
CARNIVAL
Mikhail Bakhtin• There is no central voice in
some novels, only multiple unfinalizable characters that talk about ideas in their distinctive, individual ways.
DIALOGISM
UNFINALIZABILITY
HETEROGLOSSIA distinctive, individual ways.
• They exist in each other and through each other as they interact in social circumstances.
HETEROGLOSSIA
POLYPHONY
CARNIVAL
Mikhail Bakhtin• In addition to the characters
that participate in the experience, there are author and the reader, too, who with the characters help to create
DIALOGISM
UNFINALIZABILITY
HETEROGLOSSIA the characters help to create the novel’s “truths” not simply one certain truth.
• Characters influence characters.
HETEROGLOSSIA
POLYPHONY
CARNIVAL
Mikhail Bakhtin• Readers watch as they shape
each other and listen as their utterances conflict with each other; all the while filtering
DIALOGISM
UNFINALIZABILITY
HETEROGLOSSIAother; all the while filtering the characters’ observations through their own experiences and understanding.
HETEROGLOSSIA
POLYPHONY
CARNIVAL
Quiz ½ cw
• Explain whether The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is “polyphonic” or “monological” vis-a-vis Bakhtin’s theory.
Mikhail Bakhtin• Bakhtin’s concept for a social
practice that mocks authority and reverses hierarchies.
• It challenges traditional
DIALOGISM
UNFINALIZABILITY
HETEROGLOSSIA • It challenges traditional power bases and opens the way to a new social order.
• He sees the novel as carnival-esque because
HETEROGLOSSIA
POLYPHONY
CARNIVAL
Mikhail Bakhtin• He sees the novel as carnival-
esque because it has the ability to challenge restrictive social forces, obliterate social
DIALOGISM
UNFINALIZABILITY
HETEROGLOSSIAforces, obliterate social hierarchies, and blur distinctions among social classes.
• It can reverse the traditional systems of authority and order.
HETEROGLOSSIA
POLYPHONY
CARNIVAL
Mikhail Bakhtin• The polyphonic nature of the
novel, in which the reader hears conflicting statements from many voices interacting and helping to shape others is carnivalesque.
DIALOGISM
UNFINALIZABILITY
HETEROGLOSSIAand helping to shape others is carnivalesque.
• The clash of ideas destroys any notion of regular convention, standardization, or rules, or even suggests a certain freedom of being.
HETEROGLOSSIA
POLYPHONY
CARNIVAL
Mikhail Bakhtin• Each character is individually
defined, and at the same time the reader witnesses how each is influenced by the other.
• Each one is touched by the
DIALOGISM
UNFINALIZABILITY
HETEROGLOSSIA• Each one is touched by the
others, and in turn shapes the character of the others.
• Carnival is the context in which context in which voices are singly heard but interact together.
HETEROGLOSSIA
POLYPHONY
CARNIVAL
Formalist Key Terms
• Affective fallacy
• Allusion
• Ambiguity
• Carnival
• Dialogizedheteroglossia
• Etymology
• Figure of speech • Carnival
• Connotation
• Defamiliarization
• Denotation
• Dialogism
• Figure of speech
• Heteroglossia
• Image
• Intentional Fallacy
• Irony
Formalist Key Terms
• Motifs
• Paradox
• Paraphrase
• Poetics
• Structure
• Symbol
• Tension
• Unfinalizability• Poetics
• Point of View
• Polyphony
• Russian Formalism
• Unfinalizability
• Unity
Reading as a Formalist
• The critic who wants to write about literature from a formalist perspective must be a close and careful reader who examines all the elements of a text individually and questions how they come text individually and questions how they come together to create a work of art.
• Instead of examining historical periods, author biographies, or literary styles, for example, he or she will approach a text with an assumption that it is a self-contained entity.
Reading as a Formalist
• Some of the main elements that call for attention are
form diction unityform diction unity
Reading as a Formalist• Form is the whole that is
produced by various structural elements working together.
FORM
DICTION
UNITY • Form grows out of the work’s recurrences, repetitions, relationships, motifs – all the organizational devices that create the total effect.
UNITY
Reading as a Formalist• Together they are the
statement of the work.
• Thus, form and content are inseparable.
FORM
DICTION
UNITY inseparable.
• The formalist-reader pays attention to how all the parts affect each other and how they fit together.
UNITY
Reading as a Formalist• In early readings, then, you
may find it helpful to make marginal notations where words and phrases recur.
FORM
DICTION
UNITYwords and phrases recur.
• Even if the wording is not repeated exactly, there may be synonyms that echo important words.
UNITY
Reading as a Formalist• Images too, can gain
significance by appearing more than once.
• They may be random or may
FORM
DICTION
UNITY • They may be random or may form a regular pattern, either way, they deserve to be noted because they began to create form and unity.
UNITY
Reading as a Formalist• Because the reader is given
only the information that the narrator knows, as he or she understands it and chooses to share it, the storyteller controls
FORM
DICTION
UNITYshare it, the storyteller controls the reader’s perception of the fictive world and thereby determines how the reader grasps the integral and meaningful relationship of all its parts.
UNITY
POINT OF VIEW AS A SHAPING FORCE
Reading as a Formalist• Does this work follow the
traditional form?
• How are the events of the plot recounted – for example,
FORM
DICTION
UNITYplot recounted – for example, in sequential fashion or as a flashback?
• How does the work organization affect its meaning?
UNITY
Reading as a Formalist• Does the denouement of the
plot surprise or satisfy you?
• Does the denouement provide closure to the narrative or leave it open?
FORM
DICTION
UNITY it open?
• What is the effect of telling a story in this point of view?
• What recurrences of words, images, and sounds do you notice?
UNITY
Reading as a Formalist• Do the recurrences make a
pattern, or do they appear randomly?
• Where do images foreshadow
FORM
DICTION
UNITY• Where do images foreshadow
later events?
• How does the narrator point of view shape the meaning?
• What visual patterns do you find in this text?
UNITY
Reading as a Formalist• Words hold the key to
meaning.
• A formalist would look at words closely, questioning all
FORM
DICTION
UNITYwords closely, questioning all their denotations and connotations.
• Etymology becomes significant, and allusions other works may import surprising meanings.
UNITY
Reading as a Formalist• The writer speaks of
experience, uses ambiguity to reach for meaning through language that is suggestive,
FORM
DICTION
UNITYlanguage that is suggestive, compressed and multileveled.
• When an incident or person is used both literally and figuratively, it becomes a symbol.
UNITY
Reading as a Formalist• If a work has unity, all of its
aspects fit together in significant ways that create a whole.
FORM
DICTION
UNITYwhole.
• Each element, through its relationship to the others, contributes to the totality of the work, its meaning.
UNITY
Reading as a Formalist• Unity is created, for example,
when a single image or figure of speech is extended throughout a work or when several images or figures form a pattern.
FORM
DICTION
UNITY or figures form a pattern.
• The appearance may be relatively simple reference to a color or sound or the more complicated use of figurative language (metaphor).
UNITY
Reading as a Formalist• In the most powerful works,
the elements do not come together easily or comfortably.
• The formalist critic looks for
FORM
DICTION
UNITY• The formalist critic looks for
these elements to resist one another, creating what Allen Tate called tension – the push of conflicting elements against each other.
UNITY
Reading as a Formalist• Tension appears in the form
of: IRONY – the use of a word or a
statement that is opposite of what is intended
FORM
DICTION
UNITY what is intended
PARADOX – a contradiction that is actually true
AMBIGUITY – a word, statement, or situation that has more than one possible meaning
UNITY
What Doesn’t Appear in Formalism
• If a reader accepts the principles of formalism, change to a text – whether it be in form, diction, or unifying devices – makes the
PARAPHRASE
INTENTION
BIOGRAPHY unifying devices – makes the work no longer itself.
• To restate a poem or summarize a story is to lose it.
BIOGRAPHY
AFFECT
What Doesn’t Appear in Formalism
• What an author intended to do is not important.
• What the author actually did is the reader’s concern.
PARAPHRASE
INTENTION
BIOGRAPHY is the reader’s concern. BIOGRAPHY
AFFECT
What Doesn’t Appear in Formalism
• Studying the details of an author’s life, and by extension the social and historical conditions in which
PARAPHRASE
INTENTION
BIOGRAPHYhistorical conditions in which a text was produced, may be interesting, but it does little to reveal how a poem creates meaning.
BIOGRAPHY
AFFECT
What Doesn’t Appear in Formalism
• The effect of the audience, esp on an emotional level.
PARAPHRASE
INTENTION
BIOGRAPHYBIOGRAPHY
AFFECT
IMPORTANT REMINDERS: FORMALIST PRACTICE
• Tomorrow, bring a copy of the story “The Lady with the Little Dog” by Anton Chekhov. (“The Lady with the Pet Dog” / The Lady with the Dog”) for graded recitation. BE SURE TO READ IT BEFORE COMING TO CLASS. READ IT BEFORE COMING TO CLASS.
• The first question is to point out a formalist concern in the story.
• DO NOT COME TO CLASS IF YOU HAVEN’T READ IT (OR IF YOU DON’T HAVE A COPY).