Introduction: Russian Formalism, 1915-1930

Abstract

Russian Formalism was an active movement in literary criticism for only fifteen years, but has provoked a continuous flow of scholarship both in the Soviet Union and abroad since its earliest days.1 Discussion of this critical movement is still going on today. In the most recent book-length study of Russian Formalism, Peter Steiner noted that the designation "Formalist" can refer to works by various individuals and groups whose ideas on literature are widely divergent and sometimes irreconcilable.2 Broadly speaking, the Russian Formalists were students of literature or linguistics who were united by their interest in the difference between poetic language and ordinary speech. Their primary concern was with "literariness," that is, with what makes a text a work of art. They insisted that one could neither paraphrase an artistic work nor extract from it a basic message, since literary form was an indispensable part of that message. Similarly, they saw literary scholarship as a distinct, self-sufficient disc...