Formalist Literary Criticism Russian Formalism is driven by an interest in renewing or revitalizing the emotional experience of art through experiments with form. Art is not a mode of thought, but rather a way of feeling. Aesthetic shortcuts employed by artists may more effectively communicate a thought, but they also corrupt and ultimately destroy the artistic experience as well. Critics like Victor Shlovsky want to renew an audience's awareness of the ordinary, to make it extraordinary. "The purpose of art is to impart sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known...Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object; the object is not important" (741). Because old forms have become stagnant, artists must strive to invent new strategies to slow the reader down, to disorient, or defamiliarize him or her. At all costs, art must avoid the audience being able to make sense of the whole aesthetic experience from a small selection of details. Formalists place an ethical duty on the shoulders of the artist to innovate and roughen poetic language. It is the journey through the text and not arriving at its ultimate destination which makes literature valuable and important. Works Cited Shlovsky, Victor. "Art as Technique" The Critical Tradition. Ed., David H. Richter, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989.
Another type of citing that Springen uses to argue her point, are her own personal experiences of not exposing her children to television programming. She first cites the fact that by not turning on the television for her daughters she believes they “spend more time than other kids doing cartwheels, listening to stories and asking such interesting questions as ‘How old is God?’” By citing her own personal account, she shows the reader that the effects of not exposing her own daughters to television are clearly positive. Springen also shares her own personal knowledge that by not exposing her daughters to television they “don’t seem to feel like misfits.” By citing this experience, she disproves the thought that children that are not exposed to television are considered to be weird by their fellow peers.
There are many factors around which our lives orbit. A major factor is the need for money. In “On the want of money,” William Hazlitt uses a bitter tone, long and involved syntax and picturesque diction in order to develop his position on how the need of money controls our lives.
they constantly are displayed through the motives and actions of the men in the play. The Elizabethan era and the Chain of being in the sixteenth century, may play a part in the play 's tragedy. Hamlet’s conflicted view of women, prevents him from extracting revenge and it leads him to his downfall. Hamlet views women as weak, sexualized, untrustworthy and inferior. Hamlet views women this way, due to the situations that occur around him and the only two women in his life, Gertrude and Ophelia. His focus on his mother 's aging sexual desires, takes his focus away from his initial thought of extracting revenge.
In Confronting Images, Didi-Huberman considers disadvantages he sees in the academic approach of art history, and offers an alternative method for engaging art. His approach concentrates on that which is ‘visual’ long before coming to conclusive knowledge. Drawing support from the field of psycho analytics (Lacan, Freud, and Kant and Panofsky), Didi-Huberman argues that viewers connect with art through what he might describe as an instance of receptivity, as opposed to a linear, step-by-step analytical process. He underscores the perceptive mode of engaging the imagery of a painting or other work of art, which he argues comes before any rational ‘knowing’, thinking, or discerning. In other words, Didi-Huberman believes one’s mind ‘sees’ well before realizing and processing the object being looked at, let alone before understanding it. Well before the observer can gain any useful insights by scrutinizing and decoding what she sees, she is absorbed by the work of art in an irrational and unpredictable way. What Didi-Huberman is s...
Lillian Wald was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on March 10, 1867 into a cultured Jewish family. Both of her parents were immigrants, her mother was from Germany and her father was from Poland. The Walds’ moved from Cincinnati to New York where Lillian’s father, Max, dealt in optical wares in Rochester. She had the advantage of a very good education; not only did she know Latin, but she also spoke German and French as well as English.
Leo Tolstoy compares art to speech by mentioning that art is a form of communication. The communication that Tolstoy writes about in “What Is Art?” is of two types, good and bad. According to Tolstoy, good art is what carries humanity towards perfection (Tolstoy 383). It is this movement forward in humanity that is emphasized by Tolstoy. Tolstoy informs his readers that speech is what teaches knowledge from human history, but art is what teaches the emotions of mankind’s past. As knowledge becomes obsolete in society it is replaced by new and more relevant information. Tolstoy asserts that emotions act the same way. The purpose of art is to express new and more relevant feelings to humankind. The new feelings are for the betterment of humanity, allowing a progression of morality in society.
The author shows that money can change a characters behavior. You see this behavioral change in Claire by the way she dresses and acts as she is above everyone. In the beginning
Mrs. Linde, on the other hand, knows what it is like to not have money to spare. She values money, but for an entire different purpose. The looks at it for what it is worth, and how it can help her survive. Her entire life she has had to work hard for anything that she wanted or needed. “Well, anyway,” she responded to Nora’s remark on having stacks of money, “it would be lovely enough to have enough for necessities” (703). To survive, she “had to scrape up living with a little shop and a little teaching and whatever else [she] could find” (704).
Lemon, Lee T and Marion J Reis. Russian formalist criticism. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965. Print.
Roberts, D. (2005). Book Review: The Total Work of Art. Thesis Eleven , 83, 104-121.
One of mankind’s most primordial instincts is to attain power and authority. In the past, power was achieved through fear, but as humans progressed they created money, a symbol of power. Henrick Ibsen, the author of A Doll’s House, was born in 1828 to a rich family, but soon lost their social status as his family went bankrupt. Ibsen soon learned that money played a huge role in society, especially in Norway. On the other hand Dürrenmatt, author of The Visit, held a pessimistic vision of the post-war Europe and the general corruptibility of justice. Both authors imprinted their previously held views into their own corresponding literature. Regardless, both plays utilize money as a motif for vengeance and control. The motif conveys effects like altering people’s opinions, changing the power hierarchy of a society and destroying a person’s reputation. The effect leads to the creation of a society based on corruption because money controls the society rather than ethics. Ibsen and Dürrenmatt feel that conveying this message to the masses is detrimental because ethics rather than money should be the basis of a utilitarian society.
Massage therapists are trained to understand the body and must be able to apply the appropriate techniques needed to meet patients needs. This course of employment is fitting for someone who has good listening attributions and is able to understand the complexity of systems in the human body. Massage therapy has an allure for many as a result of flexible hours, a variety of customers, and the opportunity for self-employment. When done professionally, massage therapy can aid the body in proper healing. It was held in high value by the ancient Chinese.
Cleanth Brooks writes in his essay “The Formalist Critics” from 1951 about criticism that formalist critics encounter and tries to show these arguments from his point of view and even indicates common ground with other literary critics. Cleanth Brooks argues that we lose the intrinsically obvious points of works of literature if we view the work through the different lenses of literary theory, however we are always viewing the literary work through a subjective lens, since the author and the critic cannot subjectively separate themselves from themselves and in making these points he contradicts himself.
It is necessary to theorize our society critically if we are to have a vehicle for correctly informed transformative practice. The problem is that much of what is called critical theory today is rooted in ideas developed by Herbert Marcuse, Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, and Georg Lukacs. What I want to argue here is that their work has tended to formulate a particular approach to aesthetic educationand a unique version of a philosophical humanismwhich is then presented as critical theoryagainst the debilitating fragmentation ...
Thornton, Jonne C. Introduction. The Beaux’ Stratagem. By George Farquhar. Van Nuys: D’arts Publishing, 2010. Page 3.