Viktor Shklovsky and Ostranenie of Art

Form, System and Structure
• The Russian Formalists and the New Critics applied themselves to linguistics in order to discover the specific nature of literary language.
• Russian theorists were deeply influenced by linguistics.
• Both Russian Formalism and New Criticism ask the question:
o What is distinctive about the way literature uses language ?
• They both regard literature as special use of language which is able to convey experiences in a fresh or novel way.
• Shklovsky argues that the devices of literature deliberately roughen the surface of language in order to gain the readers’ attention and to defamiliarize the perception which is against habitual or automatisation.
• The Russian Formalists, especially Shklovsky were not really interested in experience itself. Attention is focused not upon the extra-literary dimension of ‘defamiliarized’ perception but upon the literary process itself.
• Somewhat purely concerned with the matters of technique rather than social command.
• The Formalists believed that a true study of literature concentrates on the formal devices which are used to produce the effects of defamiliarization.
• It means to lay bare the devices themselves.
• Formalists treat the literary text as an autonomous or autotelic object.
 
VIKTOR SHKLOVSKY
Art as Technique (1917)
• Habitualization devours one’s works, clothes, furniture, one’s wife, and the fear of war.
• Art exists to make one recover the sensation of life.
• It exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stony.
• The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived not as they are known.
• The technique of art is 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 itself and must be prolonged.
• Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object; the object is not so much important.
• Art removes objects from the automatism of perception in several ways.
• Tolstoy makes the familiar seem strange by not naming the familiar object. He describes an object as if he were seeing it for the first time, an event as if it were happening for the first time.
• He avoids accepted names of its parts that makes the content of the story seem unfamiliar.
o Modernists and postmodernists writing type
o Breaking conventions in art writing
o Suppose any story from animal’s point of view
• The author’s purpose is to create the vision which results from the de-automatized perception.
• A work is created ‘artistically’ so that its perception is impeded and the greatest possible effect is produced through the slowness of the perception.
• According to Aristotle, poetic language must appear strange and wonderful; and in fact, it is often actually foreign.

Meaning V/S Significance...Why anarchism is not enteratined by Hirsch ?

The Aims of Interpretation (1976)
Hirsch tries to protect the author
He argues that meaning does not change only its significance.
He refutes the idea that meaning does not change only its significance.
But for Heidegger reading in the present we can not escape the preconception of our culture.
Another philosopher Gadamer focuses not upon the text, the author or literary influences but upon the reception of the text from the time of its composition to the present.
As Hirsch for another phenomenological critic Husserl, the meaning of literary text is bound up with the writer’s mental object; it consists of whatever he or she had in mind when the work was composed. Meaning is thus an intentional object.
Hirsch brings this idea of phenomenology and distinguishes between meaning and significance.
Meaning Significance
Fixed Dynamic
Identical with author’s intention Historically conditioned interpretation of given work
A work’s meaning is author’s Contextual and modern meaning
Should not be appropriated by the reader, if done amounts to theft Autobiographical impulses ignored and looks at present impulses
Self-identical/original Anachronistic and modern meaning
Against reader’s interpretation Assumed
Legitimate interpretation Illegitimate interpretation
Intended meaning Affective meaning


• There is no viable distinction between ‘literature’ and their classification of written speech
• The ethics of language hold good in all uses of language, oral and written in poetry as well as in philosophy
• All are ethically governed by author’s intention.
• To treat an author’s words merely as grist for one’s own mill is ethically analogous to using another man for one’s own purpose.
• According to Hirsch, this is ruthlessness of interpretation
• Professional practice of interpretation means avoiding our intention.
• Such anarchy of reader’s judgement is not good.
• The modern anarchy of every man for himself in matters of interpretation sounds like the ultimate victory of the Protestant Spirit.
• Such anarchy is direct consequence of transgressing the fundamental ethical norms of speech and its interpretation.

Genius: Nature VS Art

Genius : Nature V/S Art
Classical Critics were only concerned with technical knowledge in art and literature.
Plato calls poets imitators and divine frenzy.
Sublimity: ideas of natural ability-naturally gifted beyond mere technical skill.
 By Longinus
 Touched by Roman and Jewish thoughts
 Also calls hypsos
 Based on writer’s mental characteristics
 Greatness of soul (megalopsychia)
 Power of conceiving impressive thoughts
 Makes strong emotional impact on the reader
 Irrestible effect on readers
#Romantics  transmitted to modern thought the notion of ‘originality’
 Which was previously taken for granted or accepted as a self-evident in all the arts.
 New styles and genres are created by some individual
 Romantics played up the uniqueness and individuality of genius.
# Longinus distinguishes between rhetoric and genuine poetic power
 Rhetoric :- the command of verbal skill; skills of art
 Genuine:- not restrained by rules and regulations
 “Can attain a grace beyond reach of art” Pope
 True genius can express sublime ideas which are associated with large scenes and aspects of nature not small and intimate realities. (Opposite to Wordsworth)
 Longinus preserves certain literary devices to achieve the grand effect of sublimty
 Grand ideas-grand words
 “Let there be light”- grand idea
 Brave Gorkhalis: Grand ideas
 Imitation is a transplantation of the original to foreign soil
 Original is a new plant which grows naturally
 Coleridge’s fancy is imitation because it is derived from pre-existing materials
# Hazlitt argues that one cannot define or intellectually grasp the nature of the production of genius.
 Sulblime writers point us what is before our eyes and under our feet.
# Longinus “On Sublime” (3rd C)
 True sublime elevates us with a sense of proud possession
 Fills us with joyful pride
 As if we had ourselves produced the very thing we heard
 If any idea doesnot affect us then it’s not true sublime
 Outlast the moment of utterance
 Gives abundant food for thought
 Its impossible to resist its effect
 Pleases all people at all time
 All agree together in holding one and the same view about the same writing
 Calls genius as “demigods”( half-gods)
 Great and divine things develop
 Develops unconquerable passion into our hearts
 Extraordinary, great and beautiful
 Don’t write about what is useful and necessary
 Write about unusual which wins our wonder
 Sublimity lifts them near the mighty mind of gods

Emotive Use of Language in D.H. Lawrwnce's Spring Funeral

Emotive Use of Language in D.H. Lawrence’s Spring Funeral

“The Spring Funeral” is an excerpt taken from” The White Peacock”, the first novel of D.H Lawrence. The novel was written in 1906 but finally published in 1911 after three revisions. It is narrated in the first person by a character named Cyril Beardsall. The spring funeral takes place in the chapter 2 “The shadow in spring”. This particular section, is a pastoral elegy, that raises the issues propounded in Emotive Theory by I.A. Richards, such as valorization of nature, synasthesia, human sensibility and organicity.
In the description of spring funeral, the writer like a painter, depicts the early spring season with the vibration of the non-human world, the birds like larks, thrush, lapwings and the black-legged lamb. All the animals seem to be intoxicated by the magnificent morning and feel the thrill. The natural scenes of hazels, sallow trees and pale wind-flowers portray the gloom. In Emotive theory by I.A. Richards, he gives emphasis on the nature and its effects in the life of people. I.A. Richards believes that industrialization and modernity brings dehumanization, but nature breeds emotions in human beings.
When reading about the spring funeral, the reader is immersed in nature in a way that is sometimes tragic, sometimes ecstatic. This is one of the great charms of the excerpt from the book. Moments of life, of supreme harmony in spring time gives rise to ecstasy, and at the same time there’s a tragic side to it, as the funeral procession is going on. The Annable the game keeper has just died, and the narrator is seeing the spectrum of how nature is participating in the procession and how aloof somethings are. In the light of both happiness and sadness, we find ‘synasthesia’ and IA Richards view that discordant feelings and emotions can be harmonized only in Art and Literature. For him, Art and Literature also is a therapeutic tool.
The lapwings, unlike other birds in the springtime, they lament and take part in the wailing and crying of the people in procession. They seem to be engaged at an emotional level to the surrounding. All the other birds and the lamb retreat into silence and they are also aware of the human feelings. The narrator and the people carrying the white coffin also show the respect and condolence towards the dead. The nature’s participation in joyous or sad moments is known as pathetic fallacy. In regards to I.A. Richards, the human sensibility, or an acute perception of or responsiveness toward something, such as the emotions of another is the most important aspect.
There’s an inter-relatedness, coherence, and connection between the natural objects, the animals and the human beings in the spring funeral. The picture gives us the clue that all these entities can’t be separated. The eco-system or the “organicity” of nature and humans is inseparable. Lawrence’s description of the springtime, and the events glorifies the bio-centric view against the existing notion of anthropocentrism. I.A. Richards says that the Art and Literature has the organization of fullness of life and it creates the impulses in the readers.
Thus, the spring funeral, is a remarkable handling of the language by Lawrence, who shows us the picture of life and death, and the way it keeps going on in a cycle. The spring funeral is a great excerpt to see through the emotive theory given by I.A. Richards. It connects with the idea of the theorist showing that the emotional consciousness, and emotional response is created in the minds of the reader by a work of Art and Literature.