Russian Formalism: A Metapoetics

by Peter Steiner

Russian Formalism, one of the twentieth century's most important movements in literary criticism, has received far less attention than most of its rivals. Examining Formalism in light of more recent developments in literary theory, Peter Steiner here offers the most comprehensive critique of Formalism to date. Steiner studies the work of the Formalists in terms of the major tropes that characterized their thought. He first considers those theorists who viewed a literary work as a mechanism, an organism, or a system. He then turns to those who sought to reduce literature to its most basic element?language?and who consequently replaced poetics with linguistics. Throughout, Steiner elucidates the basic principles of the Formalists and explores their contributions to the study of poetics, literary history, the theory of literary genre, and prosody. Russian Formalism is an authoritative introduction to the movement that was a major precursor of contemporary critical thought.

Genres: Nonfiction

278 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1984

Reviews

[Mar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Acompañé a Peter Steiner hasta el final de su exposición, pero esperaba una conclusión diferente (igual me pareció una lectura maravillosa y la recomiendo muchísimo). Deje muchos apuntes al interior del libro con la intención de profundizar en muchas de sus ideas. Ya veremos, ¡seguimos trabajando!

(⁠ﾉ✷⁠ᴗ⁠✷⁠)ﾉ zaaaaaazzzzz

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been thoroughly enjoying Steiner's clear, lucid, and engaging account of various Russian Formalist ideas. Their accomplishments for Literary Theory are amazing!

[书迪 Shudi YANG · Rating 4 out of 5]

来自宾大（本书）和耶鲁的两位Steiner分别是形式主义和陀/托研究的明星。作者本人极其幽默，本来说好要来复旦大学讲座，可惜因身体原因未能成行。作者论证形式主义“学派”在观点上彼此龃龉，分散在莫斯科、彼得堡和布拉格的几派也难以统合（尤其是考虑到后来的结构主义和巴赫金），但在metapoetics，即研究文学文本生成这方面根本一致。这个观点在纽约大学Jessica Merrill 2022年的专著中作为经典结论得到回顾（Merrill本人则强调metapoetics之外的比较语文学方法）。除此之外，书中对各派观点的梳理也特别值得一读。