Formalism Mikhail Bakhtin, Roman Jakobson & John Crowe Ransom
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Mikhail Bakhtin
Mikhail Bakhtin(1895-1975) was a Russian Literary critic. He brought forward a set of theories that were rooted in the idea of pluralism. Mikhail Bakhtin’s Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (1963), introduced the concepts of polyphony and unfinalizability.
Polyphony means a diversity of voices and perspectives within a single narrative. Polyphony is a pluralistic set up in which a narrative uses multiple voices and perspectives to tell the story. For instance – In Crime and Punishment (1866), Raskolnikov’s internal struggle is diversified through the writer’s questioning and exploration of the mental state of the character.
In a way, the novel achieves a multi-layered narrative structure where Raskolnikov’s thoughts are both uncensored and at the same time questioned. Unfinalizability means that a character in a novel should never be concretely finalized or completed.
Incompleteness is the act of never reaching a stage of completeness so that there is always an openness to any kind of alteration or change within the story. In other words, unfinalizability is a rejection of the idea of a character as an enclosed, finished, known entity because finalizability leads to an absolutist and finite world where there is no scope for any change because everything has been accomplished.
So Unfinalizability is the rejection of the idea of the finiteness of knowledge. According to Bakhtin, knowledge should be infinitely open for exploration without ever reaching an ultimate state of destination. According to him, knowledge should always be in a state of flux.
Mikhail Bakhtin introduced the concept of Carnivalesque in Rabelais and His World (1968). Carnivalesque refers to chaos as a liberating force from oppression. It is a deliberate act of artistic degradation of abstractions that are otherwise considered noble and spiritual. Thus carnivalesque is a subversion of the sanctified concepts within civilization. It is a chaotic realm where opposites come together.
The rules and logic of normal hierarchies are subverted. The disruption of the regular norms of existence creates a warp where marginalized and tabooed ideas are brought into life. For instance – Official festivities may represent authority while folk festivities may represent the peripheral figures of life in a setting of carnivalesque.
Carnivalesque also uses vulgarity such as laughter to bring down the hallowed ideas of existence. Sometimes carnivalesque is also represented through lower body stratum as a symbol of chaotic liberation from orthodoxy.
The idea of Carnivalesque is linked to another idea of “Grotesque Realism” talked about by Bakhtin. Grotesque Realism is a lowering of all forms of abstractions to the material level. It is a form of critique of the metaphysical world. The Dialogic Imagination (1981) introduced ideas such as Chronotope, Heteroglossia, and dialogism.
Chronotope is the representation of time-space within a narrative structure. Dialogism means dialogue. Dialogism is a rejection of monologue. According to the writer, the monologue was reductionist in nature while a dialogue was open and diverse.
Heteroglossia is a set of varieties and contradictions within a single language. Heteroglossia is a form of diversification of language. It is a rejection of the cohesive, unified nature of language.
It argues that language should not be cohesive because conflicts and contradictions make the language more dynamic. Heteroglossia is a form of diversification of language.
Notable works of Mikhail Bakhtin include Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (1963), Rabelais and His World(1968), The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays(1981)
Roman Jakobson
Roman Jakobson(1896-1982) was a Russian-American linguist and literary theorist. He was born on 11 October 1896 in Russia. He was part of the Moscow Linguistic Circle. Moscow Linguistic Circle was a group of social scientists active from 1915-1924.
He was a member of the Prague Linguistic Circle which focused on structuralist literary analysis. He was also critical of the Bolshevik Revolution because the revolution let the chances of creative freedom lose to conservatism and orthodoxy. He fled from Prague in 1939 for Denmark. He moved to Harvard University, US, in the year, 1949.
Roman Jakobson defined 6 functions of language as “Communication Functions”. The 6 functions are as follows –
- Referential Function – It refers to context or a mental state or a situation.
- Poetic Function – It refers to a message for its own sake. It is the process that tells how something is conveyed. It is an aesthetic function.
- Emotive Function – It refers to the sender’s mental state.
- Conative Function – It refers to imperatives received by a recipient of a message.
- Phatic Function – It refers to language of interaction between the sender and receiver. For instance – light chats about politics between two people.
- Metalingual Function – It refers to the use of language as ‘code’.
Roman Jakobson has also contributed to the field of Linguistic Typology. Linguistic Typology is a branch of linguistics that does a structural classification of languages. He has also contributed to the field of Linguistic Universals. Linguistic Universals refers to a pattern which is common to all languages. For instance – Noun and verbs are common to all languages.
Roman Jakobson also brought forward an idea of “markedness”. Markedness is the state of being unusual or standing out as different in comparison to regular form. It is an idea that is not based upon homogeneity where every entity conforms to the regular form.
Markedness is the rejection of homogeneity. It refers to an act of non-conformity where one entity makes itself visible through distinction from the general norm. It is also a metaphor for artistic freedom which does not conform to fashions or peer-pressure.
Notable works of Roman Jakobson include On Linguistic Aspects of Translation, 1959, Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics, The Framework of Language (1980), Questions de poetique (1973), Six Lectures of Sound and Meaning, 1978, The Framework of Language, 1980, The Sound Shape of Language, 1979, Verbal Art, Verbal Sign, Verbal Time, 1985, Language in Literature, 1987, “Shifters and Verbal Categories.” On Language, 1990.
John Crowe Ransom
John Crowe Ransom (1888-1974) was an American Literary critic. He was the founder of New Criticism. New Criticism was a formalist movement that emphasized the ‘closed reading’ of the text. It argues that the words on the page are the most important elements within the analysis.
New Criticism looked at the idea of a text in an aesthetic form. In other words, there was a shift within the analysis from socio-cultural aspects around a text to the internals within a text. So a text’s internal world becomes the site of focus within New Criticism. He was a member of Fugitives. The fugitive was a group of social scientists that was rooted in the preservation of classical and traditional values and styles.
John Crowe Ransom’s New Criticism, 1941, proposes the following ideas – Text becomes the focus of closed-reading. The analysis of a text has to be scientific and precise. Personal, historical, moral and biographical details around a text are all rejected in the field of New Criticism.
The idea was to take the focus of the reader closer to things inside a text rather than things outside of a text. So a lot of information that exists outside a text is rejected through New Criticism. The idea is similar to I.A. Richard’s “closed-reading” approach.
Closed Reading within New Criticism advocated the sanctity of the act of reading written words on the page. For instance – any extract from a book can be picked up in isolation from the book or author, and an analysis is carried out on the particular extract without bleeding into the rest of the context.
New Criticism focused on the purity of a text and the purity of the act of reading, analyzing without bothering about historical or political perspectives around the text. It serves an aesthetic purpose where a text becomes significant for the sake of itself. New Criticism takes the idea of text as an isolated cerebral process away from politics, morality, history, etc.
Notable works of John Crowe Ransom include The World’s Body, 1938, The New Criticism, 1941, Poems About God (1919), Chills and Fever (1924), Grace After Meat (1924), Two Gentlemen in Bonds (1926), Selected Poems (1945), Poems and Essays (1955), God Without Thunder (1931), The World’s Body (1938), The New Criticism (1941), A College Primer of Writing (1943), The Kenyon Critics: Studies in Modern Literature (1951), Poetic Sense: A Study of Problems in Defining Poetry by Content (1971), Beating the Bushes: Selected Essays.
