Chapter 2 is ‘Reading for Form -1 -Formalism and Early Structuralism, 1914- 1960’ The Russians developed the so-called formal method, so they were called formalists. The Russian linguist, Roman Jakobson (1896-1982) moved to New York City before the Second World War, and in the late 1950s and 1960s, his works began to be translated into English. Formalists were concerned with the form of literature. Jakobson in 1921 coined the term ‘literariness’ – or that which makes a literary text different from other texts. The secret of ‘literariness’, they concluded, was ‘defamiliarization’. Defamiliarization in poetry A number of literary devices are used. For example, forms of repetition, rhyme, a regular meter, stanzas, metaphors, symbols. The last two may be used in non-poetic language, too. Defamiliarization in novels An example: Russel Hoban’s Riddley Walker of 1980 “On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld p...
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