 |
|
A brief history of Stylistics
Is Stylistics 'Formalist'?
In some modern literary criticism, 'formalist' is often used almost as
a term of abuse. Some critics accuse stylistics of being 'formalist' and
so inadequate to account for the variant responses of readers to texts.
But is it? Certainly, one of its historical roots is in the group called
the Russian Formalists, and one of its founding fathers, Roman
Jakobson, tended to assume that all you had to do to account for a text
was to analyse as completely as possible the details of its linguistic
structure. But, although, like the Russian Formalists, stylisticians are
concerned to describe the linguistic structure of literary texts precisely
and in detail, they are also very interested in trying to understand how
readers respond to that detail, as foregrounding theory, amongst
others, shows. As you take part in the various sessions of this course
you might like to consider how formalist stylistics is, and whether this
is a good or a bad thing.
|
