Formalism

Formalism:-

Ø     A kind of literary theory and analysis originated in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Ø     Termed as ‘Formalism’ derogatorily by opponents of Russian Formalism.

-         As it focuses upon the formal patterns and technical devices of literature to the exclusion of its subject matter and social values.

Ø     From suppression of Soviet it moved to Czechoslovakia - continued by the members of the Prague linguistic circle.

-         Included R. Jacobson (emigrated from Russia) Jon Mukharovsky, Rene Wellek.

Ø     It views literature as a special mode of language proposes a fundamental opposition between the literature (Poetical) VS. “ Practical” (ordinary)  use of language.

Ø     The Linguistic of practical discourse differs from the linguistic literature.

-         The ‘literariness’ of literary work. – Jacobson

-         In the maxim of foregrounding of the utterance – Jan Mukharovsky.

-         By foregrounding its linguistic medium - the aim is to estrange or defamiliarize. “ make strange”.

-         Coleridge’s “freshness of Sensation” of familiar objects (Romantic) it was author’s experience but in Formalism It is literary devices.

Ø     Roman Jacobson:-

-         Setting up and also violating patterns in the sound and syntax of poetic language.

-         The analysis of meter, alliteration and rhymes.

Ø     In prose: - distinction between the ‘story’ and a plot.

-         The author transforms the raw material of story into a literary plot with the help of devices.

Ø     Its influence upon American New Criticism. On the form of Stylistics and of Narratology.

Ø     Its opposition has been voiced by Marxists, Reader-Response Criticism, Speech-act theory and New historicism.

For further reading:-

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/213786/Formalism
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5667
http://www.theartstory.org/definition-formalism.htm
http://www.moma.org/collection/theme.php?theme_id=10083
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/formalism

Postmodernism:-

·        The term applied to the literature and art after WW II(1939-45)- when the effects of western morale of the WWI were greatly exacerbated by the experience of

1)          Nazi Totalitarianism

2)          Mass extermination

3)          The Fear of total distruction by atomic bomb.

4)          Progressive devastation of the natural environment

5)          Over populaton

·        Postmodernist writing reveals and highlights the alienation of individuals and the meaninglessness of human existence.

·        It involves not only a continuation, sometimes carried to an extreme of the counter traditional experiments of Modernism, but also diverse attempts to break away from modernist forms which had, inevitably, become in their turn conventional.

·        Postmodernist critical school includes deconstruction, whose practitioners explore the undecidability of texts and cultural criticism which erases the boundary between “high” and “Law” culture.

·        It overthrows the elitism of modernist ‘high art’ by recourse to        the models of  “Mass Culture” in film, television, news paper cartoons, and popular music,

·        Postmodernists rejected to instill in their work patterns of allusion, symbol and myth.

·        Postmodern literature – Jarge Luis Borges, Samuel Beckett, Vladimir Nabokov, Roland Barthes

·        Paralleled in other arts like Pop art, Op art, films of Jean Luc Godard.

·  Beckett’s ‘Absurd’ is to subvert the foundations of our accepted modes of thought and experience to reveal the ‘meaninglessness’ of existence.

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·  Postmodernism in art is paralleled with Post structuralism in linguistics- as it subverts the foundations of language in order to reveal play of conflicting indeterminacies or of relations and constructions of power in contemporary society.

The useful articles for further reading :

http://anthropology.ua.edu/cultures/cultures.php?culture=Postmodernism%20and%20Its%20Critics

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/postmodernism/

http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/elab/hfl0242.html

Postmodernism

Postmodernism:-

·        The term applied to the literature and art after ww II(1939-45)- when the effects of western morale of the first wwc were greatly exacerbated by the experience by the experience of

1)          Nazi Totalitarianism

2)          Mass extermination

3)          The Fear of total distruction by atomic bonal

4)          Progressive devartation of the natural environment

5)          Over populaton

·        Postmodernist writing reveals and highlights the alienation of individuals and the meaninglessness of human existence.

·        It involves not only a continuation, sometimes carried to an extreme of the counter traditional experiments of Modernism, but also diverse attempts to break away from modernist forms which had, inevitably, become in their turn conventional.

·        Postmodernist critical school includes deconstruction, whose practitioners explore the undecidability of texts and cultural criticism which erases the boundary between “high” and “Law” culture.

·        It overthrows the elitism of modernist ‘high art’ by recourse to        the models of  “Mass Culture” in film, television, news paper cartoons, and popular music,

·        Postmodernists rejected to instill in their work patterns of allusion, symbol and myth.

·        Postmodern literature – Jarge Luis Borges, Samuel Beckett, Vladimir Nabokov, Roland Barthes

·        Paralleled in other arts like Pop art, Op art, films of Jean Luc Godard.

·  Beckett’s ‘Absurd’ is to subvert the foundations of our accepted modes of thought and experience to reveal the ‘meaninglessness’ of existence.

·  Postmodernism in art is paralleled with Post structuralism in linguistics- as it subverts the foundations of language in order to reveal play of conflicting indeterminacies or of relations and constructions of power in contemporary society.

The useful articles for further reading :

http://anthropology.ua.edu/cultures/cultures.php?culture=Postmodernism%20and%20Its%20Critics

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/postmodernism/

http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/elab/hfl0242.html