RUSSIAN LITERARY FORMA LIS M

or Values). in Cohin3 du mt>lllk nusr ttsolitlf{ll< 8:

223-43. (A r<>ealiog analysis, using an:bival
sour=)
Kelly, A. (198 1) 'Empirioeritiasm: A Bolshevik
Phil0$0ph)"l' in Cahicrs du mondc rus!< ct soviC
tique 22 (I): 89- 117. (A richly documented argumen1 for an affinnative ao~er.)
Kline,
. G. ( 1968) "'Nietzschcan Marxism" in Ru..U.'
tn BOJton Colltgt Studies in l'hllo>vphy II: Dcnrytho/OfiZillg Marxisn The Hague: Nijboff. (The
Nicu.schean clements in Bogdanov tt a/.)
Kolakowski, L. (1978) Main Currrnts of Mar:dsm /1:
1M Goldm A&<, Oxford: Clanndon Preu (Cb. 17
analyta the conllia .,.,., cmpiriocriticism.)
Lcbcdcv. A.A. (1970) tJretld.nkie r:tlkldy A. V.
LuJtDthorJkogo (A.V. Lunacharsldi"s Aenhtlic
Views), Moscow: lslnwtvo. (A Soviet elTon to
rescue Luntteha.rskii's ae.stbelics from orthodox
hostility.)
Lenin. V.I . (1909) Materklli:m I lmplrlolrritlui:m:
lrrltlrht.rl<i< ;um<tki ob odnoi rroJmlonnol filoscfii
(Materialism and Empiriocriticism: Critical Notes
on a Reactionary Philosophy). Moscow: z,'COO.
(Many rrpublications and translations in the Soviet

era.)

Plck.bnov, G.V. (1957) l::bnrnnyr jiiOMJflkk prob~

tknlla (Sdccted PhiiO!Ophical Works). vol. 3.
Moscow: Gosizdat. (Polemics Jinst llogdono
t1 ul.)
Read, C. (1979) R<ligkln. R<rolurkln m111th< ROMian
lnttlllgrntsw. 19()()../911, London: Maentillan. (Includes Marxist issues in larger dcbtucs nbout
religion.)
Ro=th31, 11.0. (ed.) (198(i) Nitt:srJr. In Ruukl,
Princeton. NJ: l'rinocton Uni,"<t1ity Pres.. (Part l :
'Nictucbc's lnlluenc:e on R=ian Monism'.)
Scherrer, J. (1978) 'La crisc de l'intdliaentsia man isle
avant 1914: A . V. Lunachaukij et le
hogosrroiursno' (The Crisis of the Marmt lntdliptsia before 1914: A.V. LUII3dutnkii and Godbunding). in Rnue tks iluda s/artJ 51: 207- IS.
(Lunacha,.kii's role in God-building.)
T,,it, A.L. (1984) Lwwd!arskii, Pott oftht Rm-vlurlon,
1875-1907, Birmingham: Uni\'ersity of Birmin,g
hm PrcS1 (Richly infonned analysis of Lunachars-

RUSSIAN LITERARY
FORMALISM
Russian llt~y Fonnoli.sm. an acti'" nun~ment in
Russian lltrrury crltlciJm from about /9/S to 1929.
approoth,tl tht llttrary work as a se/f.rt'firtntlnl,
formed urttfoct ratlu:.r Own as an ~xpression of ret1Uty
or exprrft'nU ouukk the work. It asked tlrr qu~stlon.
'How Is th< work ma<kJ' roth<r than What dDts thr
111.-ork say1' /11 foamdinz assumptiolf, tltnt J'(Jttlc
kmpaf:' di/fors from IN lm:gualf' of ordinary ccmmlllliMtion. spo-.-.J ~tJ~nteroJU imestit;Otiotu of -.Jtat
th< Formallsu cull<td '/it..arill<ss' - tilt quolltks tlrot
~a wk artistic T1ris dist/nctkln INr.-...... !"at:tkal

aNI potti< lmrguagr also a/Iot.v-d

Famra/lsu to
argw that literatUNt Mus an auJononrous branch of
human activity, n'Oir1ng according to it.! oMm b11mttMIII
laws ruth,., than tu u cons~qu~nctt or rt/1ttllon tif
hi:rtoricol t\'1!1111. Proceeding from thi:t thtorctiCtll
mod~/. tht" Fotmali.sts 11ittl~d liurary work.r til
usporuu to prt'liow litc.ratun! ratht!r than w the
ouulth- M'Orfd.
In tltelr 1/tuar)' thtory and thtlr lnUrprtlatlons of
partinllar fir~rary -.'O'I'b. 1M Formalists ve rt:G~thfx
to tlrt pmlom/nant tttuknq of Rwslan /itffllr)'
<ritidsm to """'' dirn:t ~ /Nn.vm lim/
up<ricw and tilt lituary k. Boris Eikltnboum,
&man Jukobs.>n, V'J<tor Shklolkii. Borl.t T!lmashrrskl~ lurli 1)11./uno, and other Formalilu qucstione:rl autpled roTTtSJKmdences bet.,.'etn 1(/t nmlmt,
ca.stbtg tlo11bt UJHNt realist inttrpretallom of RuJJfon
authors surlr us Gos,'OJI unJ Tolstoi. and txamilliiiJ: tltt
naffatfre structurt' of nonRussinlf -orks such UJ
Tristram Shandy twl 0 . Henry's short sror/n. Their
analyses shott>rJ Ito intonation. M"'rrl ordt'r, rhythm
and rrforentiol tttanilfg interact K"izllin a litnur1 u'Oft.
and tltf'y arpt'd tltot littrary -.-orb uu lts.s "
rtfltlo of lifo than "" atttmpt to rtfruh ...,..,.
tiona/ perrrptkllu. 1M lnflumu ofiWukln 1/t..-ary
Formalism Is ftlt In mon """'' th<orrtiml ~rlrools
sudt w :mniotln. stfiKIIUO.Iisni, ckconstructlun./cm
fnilt tritiri.rttr and new hl.storicism. in so /ilT a.r u/1 of
theM' take llotmt of th" portfcular u.re of language In
any llttmry work.

kii"s early dc\-cloprncnL)

Uu:chin, S. V. (1958) 'Bolsheviks and Their Allies aner

1917: The Ideological Pattern', in Sorltt Studies 10:
ll.l-35.
Williams. R.C. (1986) Th< Otltn Bolsh<rila: Lm/n
aNI Ills Critia. 1904-1914, Bloominaton. IN:
IndiAna Unh-.rsity Press. (A history th>t empho.sizes political mues.)
DAVID JORAVSKY

I
2

3
4

Practical vtrSUS poetic . . _ , .

U ttnorl..,..
IJttnll)' tfl)IUtion
Aot-_y of tit<rataro

Pnctlcal ~ poetic ~
Ruosi:m litcr.~ry Fonnalism can be roughly divided
into three periods. From 1915 to 1919. it solljlht to
I

409

RUSSIAN LIT E RARY FORMALISM

establish the distinction betwten practical and poetic

language; from 1919 to 1921 it investigated the usc of
poetic language in particular literary worb; and from
1921 until 1929 it examined literary works as
responses to pm1ow literary history. The movement
began as part of the avantgardc experimentation in
the arts in the )'ears surrounding the Bolshevik
revolution of 1917. Its practitioners formed l\1.'0
groups: the Moscow Linguistic Circle, which included
Roman Jakobson. J>Ctr Jlogatyn:v. N. Trubctskoi and
Grigorii Vinokur. and its sister group in St Petersburg. the Society for the Study of Poetic Language
(Opoiaz), whose members included Osip Brik, Boris
Eil:henbaum, !.<:'' lakubinslcii, Evgenii Polivanov,
Viktor Shklovslcii, Boris Tomashevskii and lurii
Tynianov. This collaboration between linguists and
literary seholars addressed language as the focal point
of literature. Verbal texture was examined as the
artistic medium of litc.ratun:., which contributed to
message. In seeking to build an objcct.ive theory of
literature, Russian literary Fonnalism ignored autho r~
iaJ intention, biography and social and historical
conditions. the betlCr to focus on the \lo"'rk itself.
Taking il$ cue from the sound experiments of
Rwsian Futurist poetr)', early Formalism drew
attention to the non-referential aspects of language,
p3rticularly to the role of sound. In 'Vosk:reshenie
slova' (The Resurrection of the Word) (I 9 I4), which
may be considenxl the inaugural work of Russian
literary Formalism. Viktor Shklovsldi declared that
tbc expressive impact of words was dulled by habitual
usage and tbat the purpose of literature was to res-tore
to words a sense of newness and t o stimula.tc new
peroept.ion~ In ' lskwstvo kak pri&n' (Art as De\1oe)
(1916), Shklovskii introduecd the concept of ostron<
nit ('defamiliarization') to refer to the ways in whic;h
literary w'Ork.s may overturn convc:ntionlll perceptions.
The whole edifice of Russian Formalist theory rests
on the differentiation between pntctical and poetic
language, formula1ed by Jakubins kij in his 1916
article, '0 zvukakh stikhotvomogo iazyka' (On the
Sounds of Verse Language). Iakubinskii argued that
tbc goals of ordinary speceh and poetic language wen:
fundamentally opposed. E>-eryday utterances wen:
aimed at rapid, efftcient communication, and to lhat
end they employed readily rccogniznble formulations.
This 'automatized' language, as the Fonnalists termed
it, grown familiar through repeated, habitual use. had
attained u narrow functionality at tbc c:xpense of its
vitality and richness. The goal of poetic speech was to
restore the palpability of language that is lost with
quick recognition. Poetic la.nguage. said Jakubinsldi.
retards the procc:ss of comprehension while making it
muhilaym:d, bringing out a wcahh of accumulated
meanings. Where pnlClical language is highly refer

410

ential, pointing unambiguously to objects and ideas,

poe.tic language is largely self-referential, drawing
attention to the ,erbal pauem of the work.
In their preoccupation with the rtntwal
automatized pefCC'ptions and with the properties of
language. the Formalists were influenced by Andn:i
Belyi and Henri-Louis BeaGSON . Belyi's 1910 book,
SirmVJII:m (Symbolism), had aucrnpt.ed to eslllblish
an 'anatomy of style' by counting syllables, accents
and parts of speech in thousands of lines of verse.
followin,g Bclyi. the Fonnalist.s took 110 almost
scientilic approach to litcr.uy analysis.
Until about 1919. Russian literary fonnali.sm was
occupied with attempts to characte-rize poetic lao
guage, investigating the question of how the renewal
of automatized language was achiC\'Cd, Studies by
Brik, Polivanov and Shklovskii showed that in poetry
and other short genres words were sc:lected for their
auditory properties no less than for their referential
meaning. They explored sound patterns in literary
texts. showing that meaning resides in sound as well
as in semantics. ShkJovskii in particular idcntiHcd
literary 'devices', such as retardation (the intentional
s.IO"Ning down of plot development to create sus
pensc), parallel story lines and repetitions. Plot
de\'elopment itself was shown to be a device: the
chronology of n na.rrative could be ~arranged to
achieve panic-u lar effects. The presumed cbrono
Jos:ical order of events in a narrath<e the Formalists
termed fabula (frequently trnslated as 'story'); the
artistic reanangement
events for purposes of
nai'TllliOn they called shdJ_, (usually rendered OS
'plot'). As with the distinction between practical and
poetic language. here too the formalists cast matters
in terms of an opposition between ahe non-literary
(fabula) and the literary (siu:h<~) .

or

or

Uten.rintss

The Fonnalists' emphasis on the de\'iCC and their

attention to arrangement and selection of verbal
clements were an anempt to account for what
Jakobson termed the lit~rarine.u of the wo rk.. Message
was necessarily affected by presentation, so that a
v.'Ork's literariness was an integral and inseparable
part of its mcssa,gc or content. Instead of seeing fonn
as a CO\'cring imposed on a prc-.existing content, the
Formalist< rejeeted the dichotomy of content and
form, seeing "-ords- syntu and intonalion as simultaneously both content and form. The liter31}' work
consisted exclusively of formed content.
Formalist theory and practice were pan of a
strident literary debate with Ru..ulan Marxist critics..
and many Formalist statements v.'e re deliberately
polemical and one-sidtd. Formalism s hared its

RUSSIAN LIT ERARY FORMALISM

polemical stance and emphasis on form with Russian

Futurist poetry. whK:b emphasized sounds in isolalion
from meaning; the sctf-va.luablc' word; neologisms;
and shock \'alue. Shklovskii's widely publicized
slatcmcnt. art is the sum of its devices'. was an
example of the polemical nature of Formalist
utterances, as were his assessment of L:lurencc
Sterne's Tristram Shandy as the most typic:al novel
of world Jilerature. and his catcsorical statement that
a literary work is nothing but form.
In spite of such catchwords and slogans, the
Formalist emphasis on form in no way dismissed
meaning. Eikhcnbaums study of verse intonation in
his book Mlodika russkogo lirlcheskogo stlkha
(Melody in Russian Lyric Vme) (1922) examined
the interaction of lc.1:ical meaning a.nd syntax in
dozens of poems, showing that titerary interpmation
rested on the blend of the semantic and the formal.
Formalism sought to displace the wual explanation
of content as a reflcc;tion of lhc non-lilcrary world,
n:placin.g it \\;th au approach to content as u literury
component of a work. What the Formatisu objected
to (like the American New Critics afier them) was the
attempt to paraphrase a work's content, extracting it
from the '"'rbal blend. The problem with the
content- form dichotomy was that it implicitly equated content with meaning.
With the dislinction between poetic and praclical
language in place, the Formalists began to examine
the workings of poetic language in <pecilic literary
tcxu. This middle stage of Formalism, lasting from
about 1919 to 1924, treated the literry work ""
'dynumic system' in which contrasting nnd often
confiicting features competed for primacy. Instead of
matching each other and forming a congruous whole.
dements such as rhythm. syntax and intonation were
shown onen to be at odds, forcing oonc:esslons from
one another in a strugg.le for dominance. At the heart
of poetic language the FormaHsts saw not hannony
bu1 diS50naocc, incongruity and struggle. This
foll.owed logicaUy from their premise of automatiza
tion: the need for poetic language constantly to renew
and dcfamiliarizc meant the creation of new, unexpected combinations of linguistic and semantic
material. Borrowing from the German acstheticiao
Broder Christiansen tbe conc:cpt of the dominu.nta,
Tyniaoov in Problemy ttikhorw>rnogo ia=yka (Problems of Verse Language) (1924) tbeorizod that the
pw.ailing clement in this struggle deformed the
others.. Tynianov introduced the term 'constructhc
principle' to refer to the relationship betv.lXIJ the
dominanra and the other elements in a work.
ShlciO\skWs catchphra.se art is the sum of it.~ devices'
was now sho~A-n to be an oversimptiration: an was
far more than the mere sum of its pans. because the

meaning of each part was dependent on the whole

context created by the work. Each dement served to
place the others in relief.
To view the literary v.'OriC as a 'syttcm' was to see it
as a self-created world rather than an imitation of
outside reality or referent. In this the formalist
concept of the literary work paralleled the work of
FerdillllDd De SAussuoe (2) on the sign. SauMure's
sign. which cons-isttd of mental concept (signified)
and word (signifier), took no account of the referent,
which was completely ouuide the sign. Similarly, for
the Formalists 'content". like rt'fercnt, w;u completely
outside the literat) work~ which consisted of acsthe-.
ticizcd meaning- the interctction or an compone-nts or
the literary work.
Since the goal of poetic language was to renew
familiar, automatized language, and since what was
familiar changed o~r time. it followed that what
constitUied poetic language in one epoch would ttase
to be poetic in the nex.L Poetic lnnguagc itself was
su$0Cptible to automatization through rqx:ated usage
in different works, therebY losing iu poeticity. Writers
trying 10 overcome the automatized oc:m\'CTltions of
their literary ~rathers' would turn to works by their
'grandfathers' or 'uncles' for device,s that might
revitalize cxbawtcd goo= In 'Noveishaia rwskaia
poCziia' (Modem Russian Poetry) (1919}, Jakobson
stated 1hat new literary fonns arise to replace pte\'ious
literary forms that have become exhausted. This
position. for wbich the Formaliu found precedent
in the work of lhe nine.teenth-a:ntury Russian
ethnogrnpher Aleksandr Vcselovslc.ii, contnlSted with
tbc wide1y held view of tbe ninctcc:nth-<:entury c;i,ic
critics und the Bolsheviks that new forms in literature
arc needed to express a DC"4' coo tent, such as a change
in the structure of society.
3

U tmuy .,..,Jutioo

l.n boildiog change into its model of poetic language.

Russian literary Formalism diiTered from theories
that applied a formulaic description to oil works of a
given genre. Poetic language was by defmitioo neu
language. In '0 literatumoi Cvoliutsii' (On Literary
Evolution} (1927), Tynianov described thi process of
rcn~ul and change: in poetic language as a rour-step
cycle of titernry evolution: ( I} a new constructive
principle arises to rcpl!lOC the previously dominant
one that has ftnally become automatized; (2) the new
constructive principle gains currency in new literary
works; (3) it becomes more ";despread; (4) it
becomes automatized and e\ok:es opposing construe

th-e principles.
The concept of a constructive principle within a
d)'namic syst<:m whose elements are constantl)'

41 I

RUSSIAN LITERARY FORMALIS M

colliding allowed the Formalist.~ to cballcuge accepted

interpretations of major literary works, c:spcciaUy
those widely char.tctcriud as examples of realism.
Eikhcnbaum"s seminal anicle on Gogol''s short story
The Overcoat' called into question the constnsual
interpretat ion of that story as a portrayal of the
humble man didaincd by his coll<a~~UCS and s uperiors in an inhumane society. Eikbenbaum araucd thai
the 'realist passages. including the famous words ' I
am your brother', universally interpreted as a plea for

recognition of human dignity. constilute only one

strand of Gogol"s narrative. and that they are
undercut by another, comic strand wo\'en out of sheer
linguistic play. When a rc3.list narrative is placed in
the context of a lingui.nic game. Eikhenbaum argued,
its meaning is altered.
Eikhe_o baum's article reflecled the Formalist bias
that TC".llistic mimesis v.'lls not the main business of
literature. Raving established that each w'Ork con
stituted an aesthetic system. the Formalists now had
a.o approach to Literature that could be offered as an
alte-rnative to realist readings. A )')'Stttn of interacting
elements meant that the funCiion of a device c:ouJd
change depending on its context. Furthermore. the
workings of this dynamic system, the demands of
artistic presentation. worked against an accurate
rel'lection of the world. Aesthetic n:quirtments con
fficted with factual accuracy; literary works on
historical themes might need to sacrifice historical
u.o;ur.scy in the interests or aesthetics.

Autonomy of lltenllft

The differentiation betv.-cen practic-.sl and poetic

language. as well as the notion of system. allowed
the Formaljsts to claim that literature was an
autonomous activity not cll.1.ined to economic. social
or potitical reality. The Fonnalists thus liberated
literary stud;es from the mimetic orientation that sees
the work as a reflection of the world. Such harnessing
or the literary work to tbe outside ""orld had been the
practice of mainscre:~m Russian literary criticism. It
char.tcteriz.cd the radical civic critics of the. mid
nineteenth c:. mtury. who pres.'led literature into the
service of social justice: the academic critics of Lhe
cultural-historical and culturl-psycbological schools;
and also the Marxist critics who gained legjtim:acy
atlcr the BolshC'\ik Revolution and \41th whom the
Formalists engaged in bitter polemics. Russian
literary Formalism sel out to make lite-rary c,riticism
into a scholM iy discipline by construc.ting an
'objective' theory of literature, centn.-d oo the '\\"'rk
itself, that would not subordinate tbe study of
Jjtcraturc to other disc.ip1ines. Most of the Formalists'
theoretical concepts. suc-h as their early emphasis on
412

sound and the palpability of the word, pointed to the

work itself rather than 10 tbe cultural context that

produced it.
The case for literary autonomy was a major
achievement of Formalism while simultaneously
cont.uining the germ of its demise. The notion on
which autonomy rested - that of a poetic language
whose definition lay in the revitalizatjon of auto
matized forms - accounted merely for the fact of
Literary change. not for the acrual direction of change
at any given time. By 1M mid-1920., it became clear
that the automati7..ation/rcvitalization d)'namic. while
at least partly vaJid. left 1oo many questions
unansv.cred~ and that the answers wen: to be found
in the nonlitcrary contexts that formalism bad
dismissed as irrelevant to literariness and aesthetics.
Within the confines of the purely work-ccontred
poeti~ no further insights were pos!ible.
In an attempt to incorporate some of these
contexts without sacrificing the literary a utonomy
for which Formalism had fought so hard. Tynianov
proposed a modiiacation of Formalist theory. His
artkle of 1927. on Literary Evolution' , put fonh a
model of culture presenting its various aspects economic, social. political, religious. linguistic, lit
emry- as par..tlel, autonomously de\'eloping lines. or
'series'. Tynianov's model preserved lhe Formalist
premise or literary autonomy, s.ince eacb scr;es had its
own immanent development that was not directly
affected or 'caused' by any other series. lndireet
influences from othe.r series. howC\er. could occur.
passing vertically from one series to the next as
though through a porous membrane. The most
significant inOuencc. Tynianov suggested! would
come from the nei.g hbouring series; influences from
more distant series. which would have to ~ss through
the intervening series., would be modified along the
way and more difficult, if not impossible, to tr.lce..
Initially Tynianov mainta.incd that the literary series
had as its closest neighbour the linguistic series;
subs<quently, in a collabomtive article or 1928,
'Problems in the Study of Literature and Language',
Tynianov and Jnkobson proposed thut the series
change their po~itions. so that in different c.r.1s the:
litcrJ.ry series might border on the economic:. the
social or the politicaL
At the same time that the model of the parallel
series was intended to rcin,igonuc the increasingly
repetiti\'e' pructice of Formalist criticism by ad.mining
a select amount o f extra-literary inforntation into
literary interpretation, it also challenged the Mar.c:ist
model of economic base a.nd cultural superstructure
(sec MARX. K 8). Tynianov~s model. in providing for
immanent delelopment within e.ach series. conferred
on literature and all other aclivities an autonomy that

RUSSIAN LITERARY FORMALISM

was incompatible with the notion of a base n:Occted

in a superstructure.
\Vith the rigid controls imposed on literature.
philosophy and theory at the clo<e: of the 1920s when

Stalin tonsolidatcd his pc)\\'CT. the r"'nnalists had to

abandon the attempt to open their literary theory to
include extmlitemry facton. Those Fo!1Dalists who
mnained in Russia by and large omitted theoretical

issues from their subsequent writings. The lendency of

post...~tructuralist literary theories to place literary
l\'Orks in their broader cultural context addresses an
omission of Formalism; but these same critical
schools have internalized the founding Formalist
assumption that the construction of lhe linguistic/
literary utterance is central to mcanlng.

Su a/so:

D ECONSTRUCTION I; SEMIOTICS:
STRU(..,.URALISM; STitUCTU1tAI.ISM IN LITkARY
1'H0RY

R<r.,._ and r""h<" ...,.ding

Any, C. (1994) &ris Eikhtnbaum: VoiC<'.r of a Russian
Formalist. Stanford, CA: Stanford Uni,-ersity I'=
(See ch. 3 for analysi of Formalist theory.)
Bclyi, A. (1910) Simrolizm: Kniga statti (Symbolism:
A Book of Artid05), Moscow: Musaget. (Referred
to in I.)
Bcnnell. T. (1979) Formalism and Marxism, london:

Methuen. (E..u.mines Fonnalism with respect to

Saussuro, Bal<htin, Althusscr and postAlthusser-

ians.)
Eikhenbaum, B. (1922) Mtlodiko ru.ukoga liridlt'S
kogo stikha (Melody in Russian Lyric Verse), St
Pctcnburg: Opoiaz. (Contrasts the melodic intonational StrUCture of poems by Zhulc::O\'Sl::ii and
LermontO\' with unmelodic poems of Pushkin.
Tiutchev and Fet.)
(1919) 'Kal: sdelana "Shind'" Gogolia'; tmns.

R. MagWre, 'How Gogors '(0\'Cl'OOat'' Is Made', in

R. Maguire (ed.), Gogo/ from til Twentieth
Century: El~rtn 1S(lys, Princeton, NJ: Princeton
Uniwrsity Press, 1974, 269-92. (The classic e.umplc of Russian formalism, showing how syntax and
word play can undermine con\'cntional semantics.)
Erlich. V. (1981) /Wssian Fomwlism: /JisiOr)' Doc:lfini!, New Ha,en, CT: Yale Unh'et'sity Press.
(Founh edn of Erlich's definitive 19SS work on
Russian Formalism. with full bibliogmpby.)
Gorman. D. (1992) 'A Bibliography of R ussian
Formalism in English', in Style 26 (4): SS4-76.
(Thorough listing of anthologies, works by individual Fonnalists. and works about Formalism.)
Hansen-Love. A. (1978) Dtr russi.rche ForrnolisnuL~

Vienna: Akademie der

Wlssen.~hanen.

(Written

aftc:r Erlich's study and assumes greater knowledge

of Formalism.)
lalcubinskii, L. (19 16) '0 zvukakh stilohotvomogo
ia:cyka' (On the Sounds of Verse Language). in
Sb"rniki po ltarii poitichtskogo iaz)ka (Colkcted
Articles on the Theory of Poetic Language),
Pctrograd: Opoiaz, \'ol. I. (Referred to in I.)
Jalcobson, R. ( 1919) 'Novcishaia russkaia poCziia':
tsan~ E. Brown. ' Modem Ru.sian Poetry: Velemir
Kblebnikov'. in E.J. Brown (ed.) Major Soit
Writers: Essays in Criticism, New York, NY:
Oxford Unh-ersity Press. 1973, 58- 82, 413-14. (A
Fonnalist study of the Futurist poetry of Velcmit
KhlcbnikO\.)
Jakobson, R . and T)llianov, lu. ( 1928) ' Problemy

izucheniia literatury i iazyka'; trans. H. Eagle.

' Problems in the Study of Literature and Lan
guage', in L. M atejka and K. l'omorska, eds.

Readings in Russian Pot-tics: Formalist and Struea

ruralist Views, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 197L,
79-81. (Written when Russian Formalism had
exhausted iu possibiliti05, this brief outline sug
gesL< new clirections for literary theory.)
Jameson, F. (1972) The Prison-House of Language: A
Critical Accoullt of Structuralism cmd Russian
Formalism, Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni\ersity
Press. (Theoretical analysis (or knowledgeable
readers.)
Shklovskii, V. (Shklovsky) (1914) 'Voslrreshenie slova';
tmn.s. R. Sherwood~ The Rc.surrcc:tion or the
Word', in S. Bann and J. Bowlt. (eds). l!u.ssfon
Formali.tm: A Collectltm of Artlclt.s and Texts in
Translation, Edinburgh: Sonttish Academic Press,
1973, 41- 7. (The fint work of Russian Fo!1D3Iism
argues that a pocl'S task is to make us perceive
ramiliar words in a new way.)
( 1916) 'lskusstvo kak pri&n'; tran.~ B. She~ 'An
a$ Device', in V. Sblovskii (Shklo,'lik'JI), Thtory of
ProSt. Elmwood Pork: Dalkey Arehive. 1990. (How
literary works renew ton\entional perceptions.)
Shukman, A . (1977) 'A BibliographY of Translations
of Formalist Writings', in Ru~~ian Portics in
Translation. \'01. 4, Formalist Theory, eds L. O'Toole
and A. Sbukman, 100-8. (123 titles in English,
French, Gennan and Italian. lndude$ a category on
aakhtin and bls School".)
Steiner, P. (1984) Russian Forma/isnr: A Met"f'''Iic:t.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell Unhenity Press (Argues for
metaphorical basis of Formalist theory. which
variously approaches literature as machine. organ
ism o r system.)
Striodter, J. (1989) Literary Structurt. Et'Oiuiion. and
Valut!: Russian Formalimt tmd Czech Structuralism
Reconsidered, Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni,'Cfsity
Press. (Ch. I expli.,.tes Formalist theory of prose
413

R USSIAN MATERIALISM: 'THE 1860s'

and evolution; ch. 2 e.umines relationship of

Russian Folllllllism with the Prague Sehool.)
Tynianov. lu. ( 1924) Problemy stlkhor.-orrwgo lazyka;
trans. M. Sosa and 8. Harvey, Probltms of Vtrst
Language, Ann Arbor, Ml: Ardis, 1981. (Distin
guisbcs literary criteria for poetry vetsU$ prose.)
(1927) '0 literatumoi tvoliutsii '; trans. C.
Luplow, 'On Literary Evolution', in L. Matejka
and K. Pomorslcn, (eds), Reading1 in Russian
Poeric.s: Formalist aruJ Structw-alist Vlcw.t, Cam
bridse. MA: MIT Press. 66-78. (T heoretical
discussion of bow new literary genres c\-entually
become automatized.)
CAROL ANY

RUSSIAN MATERIALISM:
'THE 1860s'
No tradition of philosophical moterlali:J11l ext.ted In

Russia until the }'-tars com-mtionall)' called 'the J860.s'

- roughly, tlu: puilxlfrom the dc:lth of Tsar Nidwlas I

in 1855 to the attempttd assassination of Tsar

Altxondu II in / 866. During thot time philosophical
freethinking. under the delayed influence of the Frtnch
Enlightt>nmenr and the rontnnporaneous influence of
po.Jt..Ht>gt!lian Guman nwtcriali.Jm. came rogetMr with
polit ical radicalism to crtatt a major soda/ and
inttlkttuol nto~tment with a br01ully nratuialist philoophical foumlation.
TM thtoretical underpinnings of tlz~ mo-rmr~nt "K'" t

of 'tlu! 1860s' M"t"rt' honoured in Russia as great

philosoph~rs and important precursors of Afarx.

I
l
3

lnttlltduallilltagt
Plollosoplllc:al contml
Soc:ioeuhJnl sipi{'laUICO

lnttlltdual U...gc

Although So,'ict Marsist historians of philosophy

laboured for decades to find a nat.i\"C materialist
tradition in Russian philosophy extending back to the
eighteenth century. no such tr.adition is discernible
until the mid-nineteenth. The influence of the Frt:nch
Enlightenment, encouraged in Russia fo r u time by
Catherine the Great, can be seen in the thought of
Alelcsandr Radishchev (1749-1802) and the ' Russian
Voltairians', but none of tbem actually advanred a
materialist ontology or significantly influenced the
later Russian thin.ters "ito did. and the same is true of
othe-r allcted early 'matt:rialisu' such as Mikhail
Lomonosov (1711 -65) a nd the theoreticians of the
aboni,e Decembrist uprising of 1825. Tbe eighteenth
a:ntury Enlightenment affected only a small stratwn
of Russian society and did little to change the overall
religiou~ idealistk direction of Russian philosophical
thought - a direction 1hat was reinforcxd "'ith a
' 'engeance by the rtpressive measures of Nicholu 1,
the 'Tsar-disciplinarian'. upon bjs accession to the
throne in 1825 (see E NLIOIITGNMENT. R USSIAN).
Materialism came to Russia in the nineteenth
century as it had come to ~nna ny - as a reaction
against Gennan Idealism; and in both countries the