formalism (redirected from formalists)

Formalism

 or Russian Formalism

Russian school of literary criticism that flourished from 1914 to 1928. Making use of the linguistic theories of Ferdinand de Saussure, Formalists were concerned with what technical devices make a literary text literary, apart from its psychological, sociological, biographical, and historical elements. Though influenced by the Symbolist movement, they sought to make their analyses more objective and scientific than those of the Symbolists. The movement was condemned by the Soviet authorities in 1929 for its lack of political perspective. Later it became influential in the West, notably in New Criticism and structuralism.

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formalism

1. Arts scrupulous or excessive adherence to outward form at the expense of inner reality or content

2. 

a. the mathematical or logical structure of a scientific argument as distinguished from its subject matter

b. the notation, and its structure, in which information is expressed

3. Theatre a stylized mode of production

4. (in Marxist criticism) excessive concern with artistic technique at the expense of social values, etc.

5. the philosophical theory that a mathematical statement has no meaning but that its symbols, regarded as physical objects, exhibit a structure that has useful applications