Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays: Four Essays.

Get an answer for 'What is Russian formalism, and what was its effect on literature?' and find homework help for other Literature questions at eNotes. between Russian Formalism and New Criticism?

Russian Formalism Second Edition 2005 Russian Formalism is the name for a group of literary scholars and linguists who between 1916 and 1929, while most were still in their twenties, developed a series of innovative theoretical concepts, claims, models, and methodological norms concerning various aspects of the literary system and its study. The.

Description: Russian Formalism, one of the twentieth century's most important movements in literary criticism, has received far less attention than most of its rivals. Examining Formalism in light of more recent developments in literary theory, Peter Steiner here offers the most comprehensive critique of Formalism to date.

Rediscovered in the West in the 1960s, the work of the Russian Formalists has had an important influence on structuralist theories of literature, and on some of the more recent varieties of Marxist literary criticism. For a fuller account, consult Peter Steiner, Russian Formalism (1984).

As Bennett notes, formalism was introduced into the world of literary analysis after the Russian Revolution of 1917 (45). When it was started, formalism was more of a school of thought than a movement since it was conceptualized by like-minded colleagues who used to meet frequently in order to discuss the best approach to use in reading and interpretation of texts.

The field of literary criticism has been moulded by various criticisms like Mimetic criticism, Pragmatic criticism, Expressive criticism, Historical criticism, biographical criticism, Sociological criticism, Psychological criticism and Archetypal.

The main influence of Russian and Czech formalism on American criticism has been on the development of stylistics, and of narratology. Roman Jakobson and Tzvetan Todorov have been influential in introducing formalist concepts and methods into French structuralism.

Russian formalism was an influential school of literary criticism in Russia from 1910 to 1930.Important contributors of this approach was Viklov Shklovsky, Vladimir Propp and roman Jakobson etc. Formalists were primarily oriented towards the form of literature.

Although the theories of Russian Formalism and New Criticism are similar in a number of respects, the two schools largely developed in isolation from one another, and should not be conflated or considered identical. In reality, even many of the theories proposed by critics working within their respective schools often diverged from one another.

Following the full development of Russian Formalism in the early 20th century, other literary theories, such as new criticism, phenomenology, hermeneutics, reception theory, structuralism, deconstruction, come into being.

Russian Formalism refers to the work of the Society for the Study of Poetic Language (OPOYAZ) founded in 1916 in St. Petersburg (then Petrograd) by Boris Eichenbaum, Viktor Shklovsky and Yury Tynyanov, and secondarily to the Moscow Linguistic Circle founded in 1914 by Roman Jakobson.

In this respect, the Russian Formalists belong to a later moment of their reproduction and were mobilized by the new left critics in their assault, precisely, on established literary criticism represented most centrally, in the Anglo-Saxon cultures, by New Criticism and Leavisism.