MODULE 2: THE FORMALIST PARADIGM
Answer the following in about 100 words.
1. Enumerate the tenets of formalist criticism as enlisted by Cleanth Brooks.
Ans: In "The Formalist Critics” which appeared in The Kenyon review in 1951, Brooks
enumerates the basic principles of the formalist methodology.
These articles exemplify the tenets of formalist criticism:
Literary criticism is a description and an evaluation of its object.
That the primary concern of criticism is with the problem of unity.
Literature is not a surrogate for religion.
In a good work, form and content cannot be separated.
Literature is ultimately metaphorical and symbolic.
As Allen Tate says, "specific moral problems" are the subject matter of literature, but that
the purpose of literature is not to point to a moral.
That the principles of criticism define the area relevant to literary criticism; they do not
constitute a method for carrying out the criticism.
2. How does Brook reject the objections raised against isolating the work from the
author's life and context.
Ans: Brooks reject some objections which are stated against the formalist critics by
supporting this approach of analysis.
The first objection that Brooks states is that they are cutting it loose between the works
from the author. A criticism so limited may seem bloodless and hollow.
The second objection is that the critics have separated the text from the reader and the
circumstances in which it was written.
He agrees to all these objections. He appreciates the fact that a literary work should not
be separated from its reader. The correlation between these components are invisible and
it cannot be dissected into seperate parts. But he claims that this is not a suitable analysis
with an objective to literary criticism. He claims that we should approach the author and
the content objectively to do a proper criticism.
3. What does Brook say about sincerity in literature?
Ans: The first proves the value of the work from the author's "sincerity"(intensity of
author's feeling while composing it). If an author says that he put his heart and soul into
his poems, it is not very impressive. It would simply be critically irrelevant.
Ernest Hemingway’s statement in an issue of a magazine that he counts his last novel his
best is of interest for Hemingway’s biography, but most readers of Across the River and
Into the Trees would agree that it proves nothing at all about the value of the novel—that
in this case the judgment is simply pathetically inept. We discount also such tests for
poetry as that proposed by A. E. Housman—the bristling of his beard at the reading of a
good poem. The intensity of his reaction has critical significance only in proportion as we
have already learned to trust him as a reader. Even so, what it tells us is something about
Housman—nothing decisive about the poem.
4. How does Brook use Lionel Trilling's essay "The meaning of a literary idea" to
show that Trilling is actually close to new critics?
Ans: In the essay titled "The meaning of a literary idea", Trilling discusses the debt to
Freud and Spengler of four American writers, O'Neill, Dos Passos, Wolfe and Faulkner.
Here Trilling shows not only acute discernment but admirable honesty in electing to deal
with the hard cases for the importance of ideas.
Brooks appreciates Trilling's ability to judge and honesty. Brooks states that Trilling is
much closer to the so-called "new critics" than he is aware. For Trilling, one notices,
rejects any simple one to one relationship between the truth of the idea and the value of
the literary work in which it's embodied. Moreover, Trilling doesn't claim that
"recognisable ideas of a force or weight are 'used' in the work", or "new ideas of a certain
force and weight are 'produced' by the work."
Answer the following in about 300 words.
1. How does Cleanth Brooks encapsulate the assumptions of Formalist Methodology?
Ans: To carry out a formalist study and to get to know about literature, we should only
focus on the content and not on the author or the reader. On the other hand , exploration
of the various readings which the work has received also takes the critics away from the
work into Psychology and the history of taste. Evaluation of readers is mostly subjective.
Studies like that won't describe the structure of literary work.
The Formalist critic, because he wants to criticise the work itself , makes two
assumptions:
● That the relevant part of the author's intention is what he got actually into his
work; that is, he assumes that the author's intention as realised is the "intention"
that counts, not necessarily what he was conscious of trying to do, or what he now
remembers he was then trying to do.
● The Formalist critic assumes an ideal reader: that is, instead of focusing on the
varying spectrum of possible readings, he attempts to find a central point of
reference from which he can focus upon the structure of the poem or the novel.
But there's no ideal reader- someone is prompt to point out, and he will probably
add that it is sheer arrogance that allows the critic, with his own blind sides and
prejudices, to put himself in the position of that ideal reader. It's the strategy that
all critics of whatever persuasion are forced to adopt.
2. Elaborate on the ways in which Formalism negates the assumptions of traditional
approaches.
Ans: Formalist Methodology views a literary work as a thing that survives independently
and we exclude the biographical and psychological elements of the author. In literary
theory, formalism refers to critical approaches that analyze, interpret, or evaluate the
inherent features of a text. These features include not only grammar and syntax but also
literary devices such as meter and tropes. The formalistic approach reduces the
importance of a text’s historical, biographical, and cultural context. When we look at the
Traditional form of criticism, it focuses on moral, biographical and psychological aspects
of a literary work. They mainly focus on the mental and moral state of the author while
penning the work. It also focuses on the emotional impact that happened to the readers
while reading the work. From all these points we can understand that formalism
completely negates Traditional approaches.
Formalism only focuses on what the work is and how is it conveyed and not on who
penned it and read it. A formalist critic strictly analyses the structure of a literary work
and overlooks the role of the author’s life and psychology in analysing a work of artistic
creation all of which have a major importance in traditional criticism.
The formalism radically disagrees with the traditional approach of analysing a literary
work by separating author from the text and from the realm of criticism. The traditional
methodology covers all the characteristics of the author’s life. From his childhood to
events he went through, his experiences, his struggles while analysing the book. Even
though Formalism agrees to all these aspects and understands its importance, it still
considers it as irrelevant and believes that it has nothing to do with literary work.
3. ‘A Literary work is a document.... That may be manipulated as a force in its own
right.’ Comment on this basic ‘credo’ of formalist methodology.
Ans: A literary work is a document and as a document can be analysed in terms of the
forces that have produced it, or it may be manipulated as a force in its own right. It
mirrors the past, it may influence the future. These facts would be futile to deny, and I
know of no critic who does deny them. But the reduction of a work of literature to its
causes does not constitute literary criticism; nor does an estimate of its effects. Good
literature is more than effective rhetoric applied to true ideas—even if we could agree
upon a philosophical yardstick for measuring the truth of ideas and even if we could find
some way that transcended nose-counting for determining the effectiveness of the
rhetoric.
A recent essay by Lionel Trilling bears very emphatically upon this [Link] the essay
entitled “The Meaning of a Literary Idea,” Trilling discusses the debt to Freud and
Spengler of four American writers, O’Neill, Dos Passos, Wolfe, and Faulkner. Very
justly, as it seems to me, he chooses Faulkner as the contemporary writer who, along with
Ernest Hemingway, best illustrates the power and importance of ideas in literature.
Trilling is thoroughly aware that his choice will seem shocking and perhaps perverse,
“because,” as he writes, “Hemingway and Faulkner have insisted on their indifference to
the conscious intellectual tradition of our time and have acquired the reputation of
achieving their effects by means that have the least possible connection with any sort of
intellectuality or even with intelligence.”
A literary work can have many aspects. It can be social, political or personal. These
aspects should not be declined and should be considered while analysing it using the
principles of formalism. It gives the reader a better understanding of the work when they
try to comprehend what the author is trying to convey and the context of the literary work
will easily strike them.
