Volume 1 Chapter One Russian Formalism Chapter Two The Anglo-American New Criticism Chapter Three Marxist Criticism Chapter Four Psychological and Psychoanalytic Criticism Chapter Five Myth and Archetypal Criticism Chapter Six Criticism of Structuralism Chapter Seven Reception Aesthetics and Reader-Response Theory Chapter Eight Post-structuralism Chapter Nine Postmodernism Volume 2 Chapter Ten Feminist Criticism Chapter Eleven New Historicism Chapter Twelve Post-Colonialist Studies Chapter Thirteen Gender Studies Chapter Fourteen Cultural Studies Chapter Fifteen Ecological Literary Criticism Chapter Sixteen Ecological Postmodernism Chapter Seventeen Post-humanism Chapter Eighteen Postmodern Literary Ethical Criticism Bibliography
精彩片段：
Chapter One Russian Formalism
Terry Eagleton，English famous Marxist critic，pointed out that contemporary Western critical theories started from Russian formalism.Though lasting for a very short period of time of about 15 years，Russian Formalism has left a farreaching influence.Its traces could be found in the Prague School，AngloAmerican New Criticism，and French Structuralism.One group，“The Moscow Linguistic Circle，”was founded in 1915 by linguists like Roman Jakobson，which based literary study on linguistics by insisting on the differentiation between poetic and practical language.The other group，“The Society for the Study of Poetic Language，”was founded in 1916 in Petersburg，headed by Viktor Shklovsky，the main members of which were Boris Eichenbaum，Boris Tomashevsky，Yuri Tynyanov and others，and whose interest was in the general principles governing literature and distinguishing it from other forms of verb expression.
AThe Object of Literary Study of Formalists
The name Formalism implied that in the hands of those Formalists the object of literary study was changed from the contents represented by a literary work(such as the social reality，the authors life，and the main ideas of the work)to the literary form itself.The object of its criticism was the traditional methods of literary criticism that was then current in the critical circles：the criticism on biography type that interpreted the text according to the authors life；the sociological criticism that completely summed up the work as the reflection of the social trend of thought；and the philosophical criticism that the critic borrowed literature to expound his own philosophical ideas.Traditional literary criticism explored mainly what contents that literature represents.Therefore，it investigated the authors life，the social events that were related to the work and the main ideas that the work was pregnant with so that it put the organizational forms of literature and the reason why the literary work becomes literature in the secondary place.
Russian Formalists shifted the heart of criticism to the forms and structures of texts，trying to accurately describe the features and functions of the narrative techniques of the work from scientific angles，because in their opinion the object of literary study was literariness.Jakobson thought that the scientific subject of literature is not literature but literariness，namely，the things that make a work be called a literary work.The discussion on literariness became the core of the theories of Russian Formalism.Consequently，the theory of mimesis in traditional literary criticism and the function of enlightening by education propagated by it were abandoned and the inherent laws of literature were stressed.According to Shklovsky，art is always independent of life and it never reflects the color of the flag flying in the sky over a castle.
Influenced by Futurism and futurist poetry，and reacting against Symbolisms mysterious poetics(though not against its emphasis on form)，Russian Formalists sought to place the study of literature on a scientific basis；their investigation concentrated on the language and the formal devices of the literary work.Russian Formalism rejected entirely the idea of the text as reflecting an essential unity which is ultimately one of moral or humanistic significance.The central focus of their analysis was not so much literature per se，but literariness，that which makes a given text“literary.”In this sense they sought to uncover the system of literary discourse，the systematic arrangement of language which makes literature possible.Their interest in literary texts tended to center on the functioning of literary devices rather than on content；literariness was an effect of form.They thought that literariness lies in the special use of ordinary language.Literary language deviates from and distorts ordinary language.The latter is mainly used for communication while the former has no such practical function.Defamiliarization，a device put forward by Shklovsky，is manifestation of the special use of ordinary language.In his opinion，people are used to many familiar things in life and do not perceive their special nature at all；habits make peoples experiences with these things(including speech actions)become automatic.The task of art is to restore peoples experiences with the true features of things and make people look at the familiar things in a different light and thus have a kind of strange feelings.This is the effect that the device of defamiliarization produces.
Narrative theories were the fields that Formalists mainly explored.Their greatest interest was to find out the techniques by which a story is constructed and study the method to link all the events in a story.They strictly differentiated“story”from“plot.”Aristotle defined“plot”as“the organizational arrangement of events.”In other words，plot is the artistic permutation of all the events that constitute a story.For Russian Formalists，story is a series of events that are set out according to the time sequence of their happening and the law of causality while plot throws the time sequence of events happening and the law of causality into confusion.Strictly speaking，only plot has literariness while story is merely a set of raw materials waiting to be processed and rearranged by the author.
“Art as Techniques”is one of the most important documents of Russian Formalism.The article does its utmost to oppose the then quite current aesthetic theories maintaining that the nature of art is thinking in images and that to study a work one must start with images.Shklovsky considered that the main traits of poetry were not images but the techniques which were used to process and arrange words.Poetic images have the same function with other techniques such as comparison，repetition，symmetry，and hyperbole，all of which were used to heighten peoples direct experiences with poetry and deepen the impression on the reader.The purpose of using these techniques was to remove the automatic ways of experiences to which people were already used，prolong and reinforce the new ways of experiences，and acquire the effects of defamiliarization.
中国大学出版社协会 |
首页 |
宏观指导 |
出版社天地 |
图书代办站 |
教材图书信息 |
教材图书评论 |
在线订购 |
教材征订
