The formal method

1.

10. The formal method
The formal method is aimed at treating only the formal
side of the work (constructive), ignoring the content
(ideological) side. Literature is perceived as a sum of
literary techniques.
In Russia, the formal method was developed in the 1920s.
by the talented philologists Vladimir Shklovsky, R.
Jakobson, B. Eikhenbaum, O. Briqu, V. Zhirmunsky, B.
Tomashevsky, Y. Tynyanov and others - members of the
Society for the Study of Poetic Language, which arose in
1914. V. Shklovsky called this method as one of the most
productive directions in the theory of literature of the
twentieth century.

2.

• This method was formed in confrontation with vulgar
sociology and socialist realism. The formalists were not
against the content of the works, but against the notion
that literature is an reason for studying ideology, public
consciousness and historical time. The scientists paid
great attention to the language of works. The poetic
language becomes so because of the "system of
receptions" (R. Jacobson). Central to the "formalists"
were the concepts of "reception", "construction",
"temporary shift", "sharpening", "literary fact",
functions, "tightness of the verse series," parodic "(Y.
Tynyanov).
• The formal method marked the beginning of
structuralism and semiotics.

3.

• 11. Semiotic research
• Semiotic method got the title from the science of
signs - semiotics. The method is considered as
one of the structuralist methods [26].
Structuralism (also called the method of
structuralism, semiotic school) is an approach that
studies the interaction of "structures" (different
levels and elements of the text, as well as
"external" with respect to the text of the
elements). The text of the work is examined from
the point of view of structure, sign (semiotics),
communicativity and integrity.

4.

• The founders of the science of signs - scientists of the XIX- beg. XX
centuries. F. de Saussure, C.S. Pierce, C.U. Morris. The first attempt
to create a symbolic functional structure of a fairy tale as a
narrative was the work of the Russian explorer A. Propp,
"Morphology of the Tale," in which he subtracted 31 functions.
• The method is presented in the writings of members of the TartuMoscow semiotics school (Yu.M. Lotman, ML Gasparov, Yu.I. Levin,
Yu.N. Chumakov), in the works of E.M. Meletinsky, B.A. Uspensky,
A.K. Zholkovsky, French scientist R. Barth in the second half of the
twentieth century
• Semiotics adheres to the hypothesis that all cultural phenomena
are signs systems, consequently, are connected with
communication. The main opposition of semiotics is the opposition
of the sign and the thing (the sign replaces the thing). In the literary
text, first of all, the meaning-bearing functions of the sign are
considered.

5.

• The sign reveals its importance in the system of
oppositions (good / bad, raw / boiled, weak /
strong, etc.), in the text of fiction literature - in
opposition to non-fiction literature elements
(rhetorical, pragmatic, communicative, graphic).
In modern literature, attempts to use rhetorical
code as elements of artistry (for example, in the
novels of U. Eco "The Island the Day before", V.
Pelevin "Generation P") are often used in the
postmodern writing practice.
• Semiotics are based on the following principles:

6.

• - the sphere of culture, literature, works are studied as a sign
system (according to F. de Saussure);
• - the verbal text structure is considered as meaning, the
world model in the work as signified;
• - Semiotics initially deals with narrative theory, defining in
it common structural elements (motifs, framework and outof-frame texts, topos, title and finale);
• - in communicative connections, three aspects are singled
out: syntactic, semantic, pragmatic;
• - the syntactic aspect considers the orderliness of the text
from the point of view of the rules of language;
• - The semantic aspect analyzes the texts in their relation to
real or imaginary reality;
• - pragmatics is aimed at studying the relationships that link
the text to potential or specific contributors and recipients of
information (in the literature - it's the author and reader).
• Narratology as an independent narrative science was formed
from works on the semiotics of the narrative.

7.

• 12. Structural method
• The origin of the method in the twentieth century. is
associated with the transition of the humanities from
the descriptive-empirical level of research to a strictly
theoretical and precise one. This explains the
structuralists' interest in logization, mathematization,
formalization, and abstraction. The first steps of the
method are connected with the activities of the Prague
Linguistic Circle (existed from 1926 to the 1950s, the
members were Czech philologists V. Mathesius, J.
Mukarzhovsky, Russian - N. Trubetskoi, RO Jakobson,
P. G. Bogatyrev, GO Vinokur, ED Polivanov, etc.), as
well as the Parisian Semiotics School (R. Bart, A.Z.
Graimas, J. Zhennet, J. Kristeva et al.).

8.

• Structuralists understand the work as a system
with a clear structure, therefore structuralist
poetics proceeds from an immanent (inherent only
to it, not connected with the context) study of the
literary text. Structure is a set of stable
relationships that ensure the preservation of the
basic properties of the object. Structuralists are
interested in the quality of elements as well as in
the relationships between them, therefore the
properties of the system, according to their ideas,
are not reducible to the sum of the elements
properties. As Yu.M. Lotman, "literary reception
is not a material element of the text, but an
attitude"

9.

• Each structure is at a certain level. The level
indicates a single order of elements.
• The structuralists consider the text according to
the figurative-iconic axis: tradition - text - reality;
on the operational-pragmatic axis: the author - the
text - the reader.
• For example, analyzing the poem KN. Batiushkov
"You are awakening, O Bahia, from the tomb",
Yu.M. Lotman relies on phonological and metric
levels of the structure, that is, on the sound
composition and rhythm, focusing on "return",
"repetition", "antithesis", "direct and inverse
relations", variants, invariants.

10.

• - the author is perceived as the bearer of many copyright
masks;
• - postmodern text can be read / examined simultaneously as
a phenomenon of mass culture and as an elitist work, that is,
it has "double coding";
• - the basis of the creative act of the writer is nonselection an arbitrary choice of expressive means, so the leading
place is occupied by collage, pastes, intertext, rejection of
the principles of determinism, distrust of causal relations of
dialectics (epistemological uncertainty);
• -the literary image was replaced by a simulacrum (fantasy,
according to P. Klosovsky, a perfect diabolical twin,
according to J. Deleuze, a cybernetic simulation model, by
J. Baudrillard);
• - Signs of postmodern "literacy" are corporeality and
schizophrenic discourse.

11.

• 13. Postmodern methods
• A special method of research should be used in the
study of postmodern works. It is called postmodern
criticism .
• Its basic principles are as follows:
• - literature is understood as a discourse, that is, an open,
unstable, nonlinear, dynamic self-regulating system in
its connection with an extra-literary environment;
• - Deconstruction (revealing the internal contradictions
of cultural practices of man) is used as the main vector
of text analysis - in techniques of parody, travesty,
irony, revealing binary oppositions;

12.

• 14. The Receptive Method
• Reception is the reaction of the perceiving consciousness
and feelings of the reader to the work, to the artistic world
of the author. Perceiving the text, the reader reconstructs
and recreates it in his own way. This invisible dialogue
between the writer and the reader (text and reader) is
studied by receptive aesthetics (other names are receptive
method, aesthetics of impact).
• The basis of the receptive method is the philosophy of E.
Husserl and the phenomenological literary criticism of R.
Ingarden, who believed that the reader is completing,
"concretizes" a work that ideally has a "multitude of
guises". The foundations of the receptive method were laid
in the twentieth century. German scientists, participants of
the "Constant school" V. Izer and H.R. Yauss.

13.

The basic provisions of the method are as follows:
• - traditional aesthetics ignores the reader, highlighting the aesthetics of the
creator, the writer;
• - the meaning of the work is not constant;
• - the text is not equal to the author's creation as the final product;
• - the reception arises on the basis of dialectics as a result of the dialogue
between the work and the recipient (the perceiving part) against the background
of the historical context;
• - in the "product-reader" relationship, there is a direct and inverse relationship
(the reader is a product);
• - the reception is carried out within the framework of "reader expectations",
which are formed on the basis of genre norms of the era, the ratio of fiction and
reality, text and context in the minds of readers;
• - "Horizons of reader's expectation" are in the dialogue with the text signals;
• - the reader can be implicit, that is, internal, rooted in the text itself, and
explicit, that is, real-historical;
• - the multiplicity of readings of a work depends on "points of uncertainty",
gaps, open dynamic semantic positions, not formulated by the author, unspoken
but directing the activity of the reader's perception.
• The receptive method does not address the study of the relationship "author and
work", "author and tradition", "author and reality".