Literature and the Russian Formalists

“What is Literature?”  is a question that has been contemplated on for centuries. What distinguishes it from everyday writing and what are the characteristics. In her essay, What Is Literature?, Terry Eagleton explores these questions and the essence of literary theory. There is a difference between ‘literature’ and ‘Literature’. While any piece of writing can be literature; Literature has certain characteristic features. The author explains how literature can be defined as ‘imaginative’ and ‘fictional’, yet that’s not the clearest form of distinction for defining literature.

Literature is more easily definable through the language used than through whether the writing is creative and imaginative. The author talks about the literary theory of Russian Formalism which was an influential school of literary criticism in Russia from 1910s to the 1930s. The critics were highly radical and skeptical who focused on differentiating between art and mystery so that there was emphasis on the functional role of literary devices. According to the Russian Formalists, literature was different from religion, psychology and sociology and rather was an organization on its own with its own distinctive structures and rules that guide it and through which it can be studied. Literary work should be studied objectively as a machine would be and not as a reflection of societal and psychological reality of the author and the time period. For the formalists, form was not the expression of content rather content was the motivation for the form. The author uses the example of Animal Farm to elucidate the point. From the Formalists point of view, the Animal Farm written by George Orwell is not an allegory for Stalinism rather Stalinism provided the opportunity for the construction of an allegory. The literary devices that are used in Literature are what sets them apart by making them ‘defamiliar’. Literature uses common, everyday language twists it using devices such as imagery, sound, syntax, meter, narrative technique. This makes the content hard to perceive forcing the audience to think in new ways. Thus, for the Formalists, saw literary language as a deviation from ordinary language.

The problem with this was what is defined as ordinary language. What is defined as ‘ordinary’ for scholars is different from what encompasses ‘ordinary’ for a common, working man. They also realized that norms changed from time to time based on the social and/or historical context. A piece of literature that is “estranging” to one group of people, or at one point of time does not guarantee that it will always remain so.  When a piece of literature loses this characteristic, it ceases to be a piece of literature. The literariness of a piece is not a property that’s eternal rather will change from one context to another. The Formalists therefore, defined what was literariness rather than literature.

Literature thus, cannot be studied as an ‘objective’ category far removed from what’s around it, neither is it anything and everything that people decide to call ‘literature’. The study of Literature is deep rooted in various structures that require value judgment. These value judgments change over context but have a strong relation to the ideologies of the time. Literary texts usually reflect this as well as the psychological state and thoughts of the author, which the Formalists had termed as redundant.  Studying literature out of this context,  doesn't give a proper understanding of the text.
Jane Eyre, written by Charlotte Bronte, reflected the Victorian society and the state of women in it. It also had certain autobiographical elements. This piece of literature, that has stood the test of time and is considered a classic literary text. Thus, Jane Eyre, has reflections from the life of author and the language used is not "defamiliarising" to the context it was written in.