Russian Formalism: A Metapoetics - Hardcover

Steiner, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0801417104 ISBN 13: 9780801417108

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 1984

Synopsis

Russian Formalism, one of the twentieth century's most important movements in literary criticism, has received far less attention than most of its rivals. Examining Formalism in light of more recent developments in literary theory, Peter Steiner here offers the most comprehensive critique of Formalism to date. Steiner studies the work of the Formalists in terms of the major tropes that characterized their thought. He first considers those theorists who viewed a literary work as a mechanism, an organism, or a system. He then turns to those who sought to reduce literature to its most basic element―language―and who consequently replaced poetics with linguistics. Throughout, Steiner elucidates the basic principles of the Formalists and explores their contributions to the study of poetics, literary history, the theory of literary genre, and prosody. Russian Formalism is an authoritative introduction to the movement that was a major precursor of contemporary critical thought.

About this title

About the Author

Peter Steiner is Professor Emeritus of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pennsylvania. 

Review

"One of the most advanced, sophisticated, and consistently self-reflective works in literary (meta)theory to date--in some respects akin to Hayden White's influential Metahistory, written with comparable verve and panache."--Review in World Literature Today

"We must be grateful to Peter Steiner for having written such a lucid, critical exposition based on a firsthand knowledge of the texts and the commentary on them."--Rene Wellek, Poetics Today

"Peter Steiner conducts a crisp, metapoetical analysis of the diverse phenomenon of Russian Formalism in an attempt to identify what united, and unites, the work of scholars such as Viktor Shklovsky, Yury Tynyanov, Roman Jakobson, Boris Eykhenbaum, and Boris Tomashevsky."--Times Literary Supplement

Edition details

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 1984
• ISBN 10: 0801417104
• ISBN 13: 9780801417108
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 278