Russian Formalism and New Criticism Lecture Notes

100 question-and-answer flashcards covering Russian Formalism, Prague School, Mikhail Bakhtin, Vladimir Propp, and American/British New Criticism based on lecture slides.

What term was used by the 1970s to describe the increasing focus of theorists on language?

The linguistic turn in humanities.

Which critical movements responded to post-WWI socio-political changes by departing from humanism and focusing on language?

Formalism, Russian Formalism, New Criticism, Modernism, Archetypal Criticism, Frankfurt School, and Structuralism.

During what timeframe was Russian Formalism highly influential in post-Revolution Russia?

From the 1910s to the 1930s.

What landmark essay did Viktor Shklovsky publish following the Bolshevik Revolution to emphasize the autonomy of art?

"Art as Technique".

What are the three Russian Formalist schools listed in the lecture?

Moscow Linguistic Circle, OPOYAZ, and Prague Linguistic Society.

When was the Moscow Linguistic Circle founded, and who was its first president?

Founded in 1915; first president was Filipp Fedorovich Fortunatov.

Who were the major theorists associated with the Moscow Linguistic Circle?

Roman Jakobson, Osip Brik, and Boris Tomashevsky.

What does the acronym OPOYAZ stand for in English?

Society for the Study of Poetic Language (Obshchevsto po izucheniyu poeticheskogo yazyka).

Where was OPOYAZ founded in 1916?

Petrograd (formerly St Petersburg) / Leningrad.

Who were the major literary historians/theorists associated with OPOYAZ?

Boris Eichenbaum, Viktor Shklovsky, Yuri Tynianov, and Osip Brik.

Which artistic movement only was allowed to flourish in Russia by the late 1920s under strict censorship?

Socialist Realism.

Who was Vladimir Mayakovsky?

A Russian Futurist poet (1893-1930) who sought to "depoetize" poetry using street language and technical innovations.

In which journal did Russian Formalists and Futurists find a common platform?

LEF (Left Front of Art).

What three major movements and theories influenced the Russian Formalists?

Futurism, Symbolism, and Ferdinand de Saussure's linguistic theories.

In Formalist music, what characteristics are noted, and which composer is cited?

Sharp contrasts, grotesque elements, and ambivalent tone; exemplified by Dmitri Shostakovich.

What artwork by Roger Fry gave graphic expression to Bloomsbury Group ideas?

"River with Poplars".

Who stated that a picture is "essentially a flat surface covered in colours arranged in a certain order"?

Maurice Denis.

Which artist stated that painting's creative force lies in color, pigment texture, and form invention without a "subject"?

Man Ray.

When was Formalism officially banned in Russia, and where did the group relocate?

Officially banned in 1936; relocated to Prague in 1926.

Who was the first president of the Prague Linguistic Circle?

Vilém Mathesius.

Who were the major figures of the Prague Linguistic Circle?

Roman Jakobson, Nikolai Trubetzkoy, Jan Mukarovsky, and Rene Wellek.

What 1929 document introduced by the Prague School laid the foundations of Structuralist linguistics?

The Prague Theses on language.

How does literary language differ from ordinary language according to Formalist theory?

Ordinary language conveys a message, while literary language is self-focused and offers a special mode of experience through formal features.

What characterized Phase I (1916–1921) of Russian Formalism?

Literary criticism became independent, focused on internal organization, and viewed literature as governed by its own laws in a mechanistic, ahistorical way.

What characterized Phase II (1921–1926) of Russian Formalism?

It moved toward Structuralism, adopted a diachronic historical approach, and viewed literary work as a dynamic structure.

What terms did Formalists use instead of "content" and "form"?

Material (pre-aesthetic) and Device (aesthetic).

Which poet's visually rearranged work is featured as an example of form subsuming content?

e.e. cummings.

Who introduced the term "Literariness" (Literaturnost) in 1919?

Roman Jakobson.

According to Roman Jakobson, what is the object of study in literary science?

Literariness (not literature).

What were the 1916 Sborniki volumes published by OPOYAZ devoted to?

The importance of sounds over meaning in poetry.

Who wrote the poem "Stone" dedicated to Mikey Smith?

Kamau Brathwaite.

Who introduced the concept of Defamiliarization (Ostranenie)?

Viktor Shklovsky in "Art as Technique" (1917).

What is defamiliarization (Ostranenie)?

A technique of art that disrupts automatic or habitual perception and makes familiar objects strange to heighten perception.

Which quote by Alexander Potebnya opens Viktor Shklovsky's essay "Art as Technique"?

"Art is thinking in images."

How does Leo Tolstoy defamiliarize flogging in his essay "Shame"?

By describing it as "to rap on their bottoms with switches" and "to lash about on the naked buttocks" without using conventional terms.

Who is the narrator in Tolstoy's "Kholstomer" that provides an unfamiliar view of private property?

A horse.

How did Marcel Duchamp's readymade sculpture "Fountain" redefine art?

By using a mass-produced urinal to challenge artistic nobility, express distaste, and show art as something to "piss on".

Who discussed "Foregrounding" (Aktualisace), and how did he define it?

Jan Mukarovsky; defined as "the aesthetically intentional distortion of linguistic components".

What is Skaz, and who analyzed it as a narrative device?

Analyzed by Boris Eikhenbaum; a type of oral folkloric narration where the narrator's voice becomes the central organizing principle.

What is the difference between Fabula and Syuzet?

Fabula is the story sequence linked chronologically and causally; Syuzet is the artistic arrangement and plot structure in the text.

In which non-realistic novel mentioned are artistic devices "laid bare"?

Tristram Shandy.

Who formulated the distinction between Metaphor and Metonymy as two poles of language?

Roman Jakobson.

Which concepts are associated with the Metaphor pole of language in Jakobson's model?

Paradigmatic, Selection, Similarity, and Poetry.

Which concepts are associated with the Metonymy pole of language in Jakobson's model?

Syntagmatic, Combination, Contiguity, and Prose.

On whose model of communication did Roman Jakobson base his six functions of language?

Karl Bühler.

In Jakobson's model, which language function corresponds to the Addresser?

Emotive.

In Jakobson's model, which language function corresponds to the Addressee?

Conative.

In Jakobson's model, which language function corresponds to the Code?

Metalingual.

In Jakobson's model, which language function corresponds to the Message?

Poetic.

In Jakobson's model, which language function corresponds to Contact?

Phatic.

In Jakobson's model, which language function corresponds to Context?

Referential.

What communication functions and factors table represents Roman Jakobson's model?

The table showing Addresser/Emotive, Addressee/Conative, Code/Metalingual, Message/Poetic, Contact/Phatic, and Context/Referential.

According to Jakobson, when does the Poetic Function dominate?

When emphasis is placed on the message itself for its own sake and language features are foregrounded.

Who propounded the concept of the dynamic structure of a text in "The Problem of Verse Language"?

Juri Tynianov.

In Tynianov's theory, what is the "constructive factor"?

The dominant component in the continuous struggle between textual elements.

Who co-authored "Problems of the Study of Literature and Language" in 1928?

Yuri Tynianov and Roman Jakobson.

Which Marxist critics attacked Russian Formalism in the 1920s?

Leon Trotsky, Pavel Medvedev, and Mikhail Bakhtin.

What physical afflictions did Mikhail Bakhtin suffer from?

A bone disease that left him bedridden and led to the amputation of his right leg in 1938.

What early work on moral responsibility and aesthetics did Bakhtin write in the early 1920s?

"Toward a Philosophy of the Act".

Where was Bakhtin exiled for six years during the 1930s political repression?

Kazakhstan.

To which institute did Bakhtin submit his doctoral dissertation on Rabelais in 1941?

The Gorky Institute.

What three major ideas form the center of Bakhtin's intellectual work?

Prosaics, Dialogue, and Unfinalizability.

Who coined the term "Prosaics" to describe Bakhtin's literary theory?

Gary Saul Morson and Caryl Emerson.

What is "Prosaics" in Bakhtinian theory?

A theory of literature that privileges prose and the novel, emphasizing small everyday facts over overarching theoretical systems.

What is Polyphony or Dialogism according to Bakhtin?

A novelistic feature where multiple contesting voices representing different ideologies engage equally in dialogue without authorial dominance.

What is Heteroglossia?

The multiplicity of social dialects, professional jargons, and generational languages interacting within a single national language.

What is "Embedding" in Bakhtin's prose theory?

A double-voicing strategy where another person's speech is inserted or implied within a speaker's utterance.

What is "Unfinalizability"?

The concept that the dialogic context is open, evolving, and endless, resisting monologic closure.

In which work does Bakhtin develop his concept of the Carnivalesque?

"Rabelais and His World".

Which 16th-century artist's paintings of human sins and demonic figures exemplify the Carnivalesque?

Hieronymus Bosch.

Who introduced the term "Intertextuality" in 1966?

Julia Kristeva in "Word, Dialogue and Novel".

What is the title of Vladimir Propp's 1928 structural study of folklore?

"Morphology of the Folktale".

How many narratemes (functions) and character types did Propp identify in his study of 100 folktales?

31 functions and 7 character types.

Which American New Humanist scholar influenced T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound?

Irving Babbitt.

Who were the main figures associated with the Chicago School (Neo-Aristotelianism)?

Ronald S. Crane, Elder Olson, Richard McKeon, and Wayne Booth.

What two 19th/early 20th century philosophical influences shaped Modernist writers according to the lecture?

Henri Bergson's notion of time and G.E. Moore's "Principia Ethica".

What critical method was practiced by Cambridge professors I.A. Richards, F.R. Leavis, and William Empson?

Practical Criticism.

Who first used the term "New Criticism" in a 1910 lecture at Columbia University?

Joel Spingarn.

Which 1941 book by John Crowe Ransom popularized the term "New Criticism"?

"The New Criticism".

How did New Criticism differ from Romanticism?

Romanticism focused on authorial emotion and intent, whereas New Criticism stressed impersonality, objectivity, and textual autonomy.

What principle did T.S. Eliot promote in stating criticism should focus "not upon the poet but upon poetry"?

The theory of impersonality.

Name three major critical works by I.A. Richards.

"Principles of Literary Criticism" (1924), "Practical Criticism" (1929), and "The Philosophy of Rhetoric" (1936).

What are I.A. Richards' four kinds of meaning?

Sense, Feeling, Tone, and Intention.

In I.A. Richards' Practical Criticism experiments, what were the student responses called?

Protocols.

What are the two uses of language outlined by I.A. Richards in "Principles of Literary Criticism"?

The scientific (referential/symbolic) use and the emotive (evocative) use.

What term did I.A. Richards use to describe poetic statements?

Pseudo-statement.

What is "Close Reading"?

Reading a text in isolation, focusing strictly on formal elements and internal structure without relying on external context or biography.

Who created "Basic English" and in what 1930 book?

C.K. Ogden in "Basic English: A General Introduction with Rules and Grammar".

How many words comprised the vocabulary of Basic English?

850 words.

What seminal work did William Empson publish in 1930 at age 24?

"The Seven Types of Ambiguity".

How does William Empson define ambiguity in literature?

"A verbal nuance, however slight, which gives room for alternative reactions to the same piece of language".

Which critical journal did F.R. Leavis edit at Cambridge?

Scrutiny.

Who are the four novelists featured in F.R. Leavis's "The Great Tradition" (1948)?

Jane Austen, George Eliot, Henry James, and Joseph Conrad.

What journal was associated with the American New Critics known as "The Fugitives" or "Southern Agrarians"?

The Fugitive.

Who authored "Criticism, Inc." (1938) and advocated "ontological criticism"?

John Crowe Ransom.

What is the "Intentional Fallacy" as defined by W.K. Wimsatt Jr. and Monroe Beardsley?

The error of judging a literary work based on the assumed intent or mental state of the author.

What is the "Affective Fallacy"?

The error of evaluating a text based on its psychological or emotional effect on the reader.

Who wrote "The Well-Wrought Urn" and formulated "The Heresy of Paraphrase"?

Cleanth Brooks.

How does Allen Tate define "Tension in Poetry"?

The simultaneous co-existence of extension (literal meaning) and intension (metaphorical meaning) forming the full organized body of poetic meaning.

Who defined the "Fallacy of Imitative Form"?

Yvor Winters.