15 Facts About Formalism You Wish You Knew Before!!

Formalism is a school of literary criticism and theory.

Its primary purpose is to do with the structural aim of a particular text.

Formalism is studying a text without considering any outside influence and factors.

Formalism rejects notions of culture or social influence, the author's background, and content.

They focus on the text's modes, genres, discourse, and forms.

Formalism is used in various meanings that relate to formal linguistics differently.

It is the same as a grammatical or syntactic model, which analyses sentence structures.

Formalisms include different methodologies of generative grammar and Functional Discourse Grammar.

A formalist approach to a literary theory involves analyzing, interpreting, or evaluating a text's inherent characteristics.

These features include grammar, syntax, and literary devices like meter and tropes.

The formalistic approach ignores a text's historical, biographical, and cultural context.

Two schools of formalist literary criticism developed:

1. Russian Formalism.

2. New Criticism.

Important works on Formalism included:

1. René Wellek

2. Austin Warren's Theory of Literature (1948, 1955, 1962).

Formalists advocated the following basic ideas:

1. The science of literature

2. Linguistics is a foundational element of the science of literature.

3. Literature is autonomous from external conditions.

4. Literature has its own history.