Russian Formalism

Defamiliarization — from the Russian ostranenie (остранение), literally 'making strange' — is Viktor Shklovsky's central concept, introduced in his essay 'Art as Technique' (Iskusstvo kak priyom, 1917). Shklovsky begins with a problem: habitual, automatic perception. We live most of our lives in automatism — we do not actually see or experience the things we encounter but process them through pre-formed recognitions. We 'see' a table without really looking at it; we 'read' a familiar text without truly engaging with the words. The purpose of art, Shklovsky argues, is to break this automatism — to defamiliarise the familiar, to make the known seem strange and new, to force the reader/viewer to experience the thing itself rather than their habitual recognition of it. Art achieves this through form: by making form difficult, extended, strange — by increasing the difficulty and length of perception — art compels attention. The Russian literary examples Shklovsky cites: Tolstoy's technique in War and Peace of describing familiar objects (a flogging, an opera) from an apparently naive perspective that strips away conventional understanding, forcing the reader to see the thing directly. The French critic Victor Erlich translates ostranenie as 'defamiliarization'; some translate it as 'estrangement.' For UGC NET: know the term in both English and Russian (ostranenie); know the essay title ('Art as Technique' / 'Art as Device', 1917); know Shklovsky as the author; know the core argument (art makes the automatic strange to force genuine perception); know the Tolstoy examples.

Roman Jakobson's six functions of language are derived from his model of communication, presented most fully in 'Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics' (1960). Every act of communication involves six factors: an Addresser (sender), an Addressee (receiver), a Message, a Context (referent), a Contact (channel), and a Code (shared language). Each factor generates a corresponding function of language when it becomes dominant. (1) Emotive/Expressive Function — oriented toward the Addresser; expresses the speaker's attitude, feelings, or state (e.g., interjections, lyric poetry). (2) Conative Function — oriented toward the Addressee; aimed at influencing the receiver (commands, vocatives, advertising). (3) Referential Function — oriented toward the Context; the 'informational' function, conveying factual content about the world (most prose). (4) Phatic Function — oriented toward the Contact; aimed at establishing or maintaining communication rather than conveying information ('Hello', 'Nice weather, isn't it?'). (5) Metalingual Function — oriented toward the Code itself; language used to talk about language ('What does this word mean?'). (6) Poetic Function — oriented toward the Message itself; the function that foregrounds the formal properties of language — sound, rhythm, word choice, structural patterning — for their own sake. The Poetic Function is the most important for literary theory: it is what distinguishes literary/poetic language from ordinary language. Jakobson's formula: 'The poetic function projects the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection onto the axis of combination.' For UGC NET: know all six functions and their names; know which factor each is oriented toward; know the Poetic Function as the defining function of literary language.

Fabula and syuzhet are Russian Formalism's key distinction for narrative analysis — they distinguish two levels of story. Fabula (фабула) is the raw material of the story: the events as they actually happened in chronological order, the 'what happened.' It is the story as it would be told in the most neutral, sequential way: event A happened, then B, then C, then D. Syuzhet (сюжет) is the story as it is actually told — the artistic arrangement of events in the narrative. It is the order, pace, and structure in which the fabula is presented to the reader. The syuzhet may begin in medias res (Odyssey — the events start in the middle of the action); it may withhold information (mystery novel — the murder has already happened, we don't find out until the end); it may use flashback (Beloved — Sethe's past is revealed gradually); it may tell the events out of sequence for emotional or thematic effect. The relationship between fabula and syuzhet is where literary artistry operates: the fabula is the same for any telling of a story; the syuzhet is the specific artistic arrangement the author has chosen. The English equivalents most used in translation: story (fabula) and plot or discourse (syuzhet). The French narratologists (Genette, Todorov) translated these distinctions into histoire/récit. For UGC NET: know both terms and their definitions; know fabula = chronological events / syuzhet = artistic arrangement; know these are Russian Formalist terms; know the English and French equivalents.

Vladimir Propp's Morphology of the Folktale (Morfologiya skazki, 1928) is the most systematic work of Russian Formalism. Propp analysed 100 Russian fairy tales collected by Afanasyev and found that despite their apparent variety, they all share the same underlying narrative structure: a sequence of 31 fixed narrative functions that always occur in the same order (though not all 31 appear in every tale). A function, for Propp, is a unit of narrative defined by its role in the plot — not by who performs it or what the specific circumstances are. For example, Function VIII is 'Villainy': the villain causes harm or injury to a family member (by abducting, stealing, etc.). Whether it is a witch who steals a princess or a tsar who imprisons a hero, the function is the same. The 31 functions begin with the initial situation (not technically a function) and proceed through: ABSENTATION (a family member leaves), INTERDICTION (a prohibition is given), VIOLATION (the interdiction is broken), VILLAINY or LACK, DEPARTURE, PURSUIT AND RESCUE, RECOGNITION, RETURN, WEDDING and CORONATION (the hero is recognised and rewarded). Alongside the 31 functions, Propp identified 7 spheres of action — character roles: the Villain, the Donor, the Helper, the Princess and her Father, the Dispatcher, the Hero, and the False Hero. These roles may be filled by different characters in different tales or combined in one character. For UGC NET: know Propp's Morphology of the Folktale (1928); know the concept of narrative functions (defined by role, not character); know the 7 character roles; know that functions always appear in the same order.

The Prague Linguistic Circle (Prague School) was founded in 1926 by a group of Czech and émigré scholars that included Roman Jakobson (who had moved from Russia), Jan Mukařovský, and René Wellek. The Prague School took Russian Formalism's insights about literary language and systematised them into a broader linguistic and aesthetic theory. The most important Prague School contribution to literary theory is the concept of foregrounding (aktualisace in Czech, translated by Mukařovský) — the process by which literary language systematically deviates from, or intensifies, the norms of ordinary language, thereby drawing attention to itself. Foregrounding can work through defamiliarization (Shklovsky's concept — making language strange relative to ordinary usage) or through parallelism and patterning (making language conspicuously regular — rhyme, metre, anaphora). In everyday language, the medium is transparent — we look through the words to the meaning. In literary language, the medium is foregrounded — the words themselves become objects of attention. Mukařovský also developed the concept of the aesthetic function and argued that the aesthetic dimension is not a fixed property of objects but a relation between object and subject, socially and historically variable. René Wellek and Austin Warren's Theory of Literature (1949) synthesised Russian Formalism and Prague School ideas for English-speaking audiences and became the foundational text of Anglo-American literary theory. For UGC NET: know the Prague Linguistic Circle (1926) — Jakobson, Mukařovský, Wellek; know foregrounding as the Prague School's key term; know Wellek and Warren's Theory of Literature (1949); know the connection between defamiliarization (Shklovsky/Russian Formalism) and foregrounding (Prague School).