Origin and early proposals of the formal method

In the winter of 1914 to 1915, a group of young theorists, led by Roman Jakobson,
they formed the so-called Moscow Linguistic Circle. On the other hand, at the beginning of 1917,
the 'formalists' appear, who were part of the Society for the study of language
poetics (Opoiaz). Both groups collaborated and that is how the 'formal method' emerged. During
In those years, new paths were beginning to open in language research.
The main interest of the Russian formalists was the language of poetry, because linguistics
I hadn't studied it in depth.
The starting point of formalism assumes, according to Jakobson, a break with history.
from the preceding literature, since "instead of a science of literature, a
conglomerate of artisanal research" and, in addition, the other disciplines took the
literary facts as second-order documents.
For the formal method, evolution is fundamental, although its adversaries had
attributed a very rigid character. However, Eichenbaum says that 'there is no science
finished, science continues to overcome errors and not to establish truths.” Likewise, it ensures
that various methods can occupy a place within the framework of this science, provided that
the attention remains focused on the intrinsic nature of the studied subject.
The formal method drew attention for its approach to interpretation and the study of
art. For example, the formalists had principles that contradicted traditions and axioms
apparently stable of literary science and general aesthetics. That is, there is a
rethinking what the artistic phenomenon was.
The formal method emerged alongside the development of symbolism and futurism in Europe.
occidental, however, Eichenbaum says: "we enter into conflict with the symbolists"
to tear the poetic from their hands, to free it from its theories of aesthetic subjectivism,
philosophical and religious, and take it through the path of the scientific study of facts.
Formalist, the object of literary science should be the study of particularities.
specific to literary objects that distinguish them from all other material.
On the other hand, formalists realized that the purpose of language will be
different when used poetically: if in everyday use language has a practical function
and communicative, in its poetic use communication is not the main purpose.
The theorist Shklovski said: "the articulatory aspect of language is important for the
enjoy a transrational word, a word that means nothing. It is likely that the
most of the pleasures provided by poetry are contained in the articulatory aspect,
in the harmonious movement of the speech organs.
In the same way, the formalists ended the dichotomy between content and form.
form, since meaning, when it exists, is the effect of form, and form is no longer a
"simple container" of meaning, as it also has content within itself. The term "form"
will be replaced by that of 'structure'.
Shklovski says that images in art are almost invariant, in such a way that a
the poet refers to the same image that other poets before him did, almost without modification. Likewise,

suggests that art is a means to destroy perceptual automatism, and that the image does not deal
not to facilitate our understanding of its meaning, but to create a particular perception of the object.
It is about the study of the specific particularities of literary objects that
they distinguish from all other matter, regardless of its secondary traits. In this way,
The starting point is the search for that which is intrinsically literary: literariness.
For this, it is necessary to generate a certain perspective that allows for the development of the analysis, to

time that is supported by solid and scientific bases. This stance demands detachment from all.
completed general theory (aesthetics, psychology, sociology) and other general problems (the beautiful,
the meaning of art), to focus on the concrete problems posed by the analysis of the
work.
The paths to generate this perspective begin hand in hand with linguistics,
when it comes to defining poetic language, when confronting it with everyday language. The analysis
from the word reduces the abstraction, specifies the object of study, materializes it and makes
the structural mechanisms that justify the evaluation of a literary text become visible. Thus,
agreement with Yakubinski, linguistic phenomena can be classified depending on the
purpose proposed by the speaker. If the purpose is purely practical for communication,
It will be a system of everyday language where linguistic elements have no value.
autonomous and are just a means of accumulation. While in other linguistic systems,
the practical purpose recedes to the background and the linguistic formants obtain a value
self-employed.
Of course, this differentiation between a practical purpose and an aesthetic one has its
based on a much broader notion related to the general problem of perception.
According to these theorists, there is a certain automatism in perception generated by the
monotony and repetition, to the point that we do not see things, but rather recognize them. In front of
to this, art plays a renewing role as it breaks with automatism and generates a
aesthetic perception, that is to say, it gives a feeling of the object as vision and not as

recognition. The way to achieve it is through particular procedures that allow

the singularization of objects, such as the darkening of the shape (increases the
reading difficulty and the duration of perception.
Thus, the notion of 'artifice' acquires a key importance: the poetic language is
difference from the everyday because the former is characterized by artifice, that is, by the
accumulation of procedures aimed at preventing automated perception. The
words, within this dynamic, hold an autonomous value, an aesthetic value; the sounds, the
articulatory aspect, they hold a primary importance and the information transitions to a
second plan. While everyday language is imposed by circumstances, the language
Poetics is intentional. This view opposes symbolism where sounds were an expression of
another thing behind them, as happened with alliterations or onomatopoeic theories. No
an emotional bond is recognized between sounds and images, but sounds exist in the
outside of any connection with the image and related to the general laws of harmony:
they fulfill an aesthetic role.

In this way, in the verse, the word is like an extract from ordinary discourse; it is
surrounded by a new semantic atmosphere and is perceived not in relation to the language in
general 'not precisely with the poetic language. The particularity of poetic semantics
it resides in the formation of marginal significations that violate verbal associations
habitual. Thus, the fundamental constructive factor of the verse is rhythm. Its objective traits
it is the unity and continuity of the rhythmic succession, in relation to another succession. Prose
introduced in the verses' sequences appears in a new light.
Thus, in art, a series of procedures aimed at are put into operation
make us feel the shape, so that the specific character of the artistic was marked
for a specific use of the material. The artwork is no longer conceived as a
ineffable mystery and comes to be understood as an artifice, as a construction created to
starting from a series of artistic procedures. However, all those elements that integrate
the work is organized hierarchically: there is a constructive factor that transforms the rest
in its subordinates. The desautomatizing procedure establishes new dominants and of that
It is possible that new literary forms will arise.
The formal method had eliminated the opposition between content and form to develop a
understanding of the much more complex form. Within the particularities of this new
notion is dynamism. The unity of the work is not a symmetrical and closed entity, but rather that
it has a dynamic integrity that has its own development and where the elements are
linked by a dynamic sign of correlation and integration.
The new notion of form generated in turn a new way of understanding the
evolution or history of literature. Up to that moment, both criticism and academia
they had oriented the study more towards the biographical and psychological evolution of literature
(conceived as an improvement), in line with notions such as romanticism or realism, of
so that literature seemed to be consumed by history.
In that sense, the new notion of form allowed for the study of literary evolution as
a dialectical succession of forms where the literary tradition is a beginning that organizes
from a point that is refuted, that is, a confrontation regarding the form
precedent that had been automated and lost its aesthetic character. The new hegemony does not
it is a restoration of the old form, but it is enriched with new scales and elements
of its predecessor. From this perspective, literary evolution does not depend on other series.
cultural and has an autonomous character, the 'dialectical self-creation of new forms'.

CONCEPTS:

In the narrative, the elements of composition have nothing to do with a thematic level.
The motives are the smallest particles of the thematic material. They can be studied.
considering them in their chronological succession and in their causal relationships, or in the order of
appearance that those same motives acquired in the work.
The fable thus equates to thematic material.
We will delve into the process of artistic creation, into the construction of a literary form.
Motivation is the relationship that allows different reasons to connect with each other.

MAIN POINTS:

They place the literary work at the center of their objectives, thus distancing themselves from the critical approach.
biographical, philosophical or sociological, which was the one that was currently in force.
They conceive literature as an autonomous realm and propose the study of its particularities.
specific to the literary, what Jakobson would call literaryness or literariness. The objective
The main goal is to discover what the proper space of literature is, what its features are.
specific, those that allow to distinguish a literary text from any other textual modality.
c) They want to explain how literary mechanisms produce aesthetic effects and where it resides.
the difference between the literary and the extraliterary.
They rely on various technical terms for their studies, in precise scientific terminology.
(required by Jakobson, for example, from the very first lines of his article 'On Realism)
artistic)
They distinguish within the literary work the presence of several overlapping layers.
-phonemes, prosody, rhythm, intonation, etc.- and they assert that, although each layer has a
own entity, all are related to the other strata.
They deny having a complete, closed system. What they do is propose working hypotheses.
and they modify those hypotheses as many times as necessary because they do not feel enslaved by their
own theories, they do not want their studies to be reduced to the limits of a methodology.
In this sense, his method is, of course, authentically scientific. Boris rightly affirms.
Eichenbaum: "There is no completed science, science lives by overcoming errors and not by establishing
truths" (1980: 22).