Readings in Russian Poetics: Formalist and Structuralist Views

by Gerald L. Bruns (Editor), Krystyna Pomorska (Editor)

Investigating the conceptualisation of structure and form within literature, the Russian Formalists affected both the creation of art during the 1920s and 1930s and the development of literary theory as a scientific discipline. Crucial to the understanding of this theoretical movement, this collection of essays by and about the Russian Formalists features work by: - Boris M. Eichenbaum ("The Theory of the Formal Method") - Viktor Shklvosky ("The Mystery Novel: Dickens's Little Dorrit") - Roman Jakobson ("On Realism in Art") - Mikhail Bakhtin ("Discourse Typology in Prose") - Osip M. Brik ("Contributions to the Study of Verse Language") A new introduction by Gerald L. Bruns provides a context for understanding why these works remain as important and influential now as when they were first written.

Genres: Criticism, Nonfiction

306 pages, Paperback

First published October 15, 1971

About the author

Gerald L. Bruns is the William P. and Hazel B. White Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Notre Dame. His previous books include The Material of Poetry: Sketches for a Philosophical Poetics, and What Are Poets For? An Anthropology of Contemporary Poetry and Poetics.

Reviews

[Eric Byrd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really your only English-language go-to for the classic Formalist essays. More pithy insight per-page than almost anything else. The title is dry-as-dust but taken together the essays have the heady air of brilliant young innovators hatching ideas in the years before they were scattered and suppressed in the nightfall of Stalinism, Socialist Realism--all that shameful, barbaric, lobotomizing Soviet cretinism. God Bless the Dalkey Archive Press!