Formalism Formalism places the study of literature on a scientific footing by defining its object and establishing its own methods and procedures. In other words, they are making efforts to find the internal laws and principles that make a piece of literature literary, or t

Formalists have generally suggested that everyday language, which serves simply to communicate information, is stale and unimaginative. They argue that "literariness" has the capacity to overturn common and expected patterns (of grammar, of story line), thereby rejuvenating language. This doesn¡¯t mean that literature language is difficult language, but literature language lays emphasis on the process of experience. Then what can be done to achieve ¡®literariness¡¯? They put forward the concept of ¡°defamiliarization¡±, to make objects unfamiliar, to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged.(from Art as Technique by Shklovsky). Eagleton could not accept the concept of estrangement. He says, that a piece of language was estranging doesn¡¯t guarantee that it is always and everywhere so; it is estranging only against a certain normative linguistic background and if this alters then the writing might cease to be perceptible as literature. As to literariness, Eagleton says that it is a function of the differential relations between one sort of discourse and another; it is not an eternally given property, and ¡° it is in fact historically specific.¡± The Formalists quite rightly thought that literary criticism was overburdened with socio-political issues. In the late nineteenth century literature was indeed one of the principal media of discussion for political and philosophical issues. Consequently literary criticism was almost exclusively the guarded territory of journalism. Literary criticism was not considered an academic activity. "Before the appearance of the Formalists, academic research, quite ignorant of theoretical problems, made use of antiquated aesthetic, psychological, and historical ¡®axioms¡¯ and had so lost sight of its proper subject that its very existence as a science had become illusory. There was almost no struggle between the Formalists and the Academicians, not because the Formalists had broken in the door (there were no doors), but because we found an open passage-way instead of a fortress." (Boris Eikhenbaum, "The Theory of the ¡®Formal Method¡¯", Öì¸Õ£¬¡¶¶þÊ®ÊÀ¼ÍÎ÷·½ÎÄÒÕÅúÆÀÀíÂÛ¡·). Though the formalists did not deny that art had a relation to social reality they provocatively claimed that this relation was not the critic¡¯s business. So what they care in literary criticism is just form not the content which has certain relation with social reality. The most severe criticism of formalism comes from Marxism. Trotosky remarks that the form of art is, to a certain and very large degree, independent, but the artist who creates this form, and the spectator who is enjoying it, are not empty machines.

New Critics: It is affective fallacy. Meaning must be in the text rather than a production of the reader.

2. World Husserl believes that we firstly think by our own language, then find suitable language for the idea, so he believes languages is in a secondary position. Thus we have pure meaning in Husserl, and this meaning is not influenced by history. According to Eagleton, meaning is actually product of specific historical point, and no meaning can be deprived from perspective.

The following is the main differences between Leavis and the New Critics

Some topics in this essay:
Russian Formalism, Criticism Richards, Russian Formalists, Phenomenology Phenomenological, Formalism Formalism, Shklovsky Eagleton, Science¡± Derrida, Leavis Reader, Leavis Critics, Structuralism Structuralism, literary criticism, literary form, practical criticism, meaning text, social reality, relation social reality, critics text, talk emotion, center center, husserl meaning, language language, change literary form,