 Welcome to my channel, I know that exams are right around the corner and all of you must be worried, really worried about how you're going to study literary theory. Literary theory is one such area of entire syllabus of English literature which scares almost everybody. So after a lot of demand I finally decided that let me start a new series in which I would be giving you a crash course of literary theory and I'll be taking up different literary theory and talking about the major facts and major theories involved with that literary theory. If you remember long back I did a crash course video on literary theory, the link is somewhere given in the I button right there and that video became really popular, a lot of students messaged me, commented on that video that you know they were able to understand theory in such an easy and fluid manner. So I thought that why not, let's take up each and every literary theory and look at it from a fresh perspective and I'll try my level best in this video series that I can put forward literary theory in the most simple and lucid manner. So let's begin with the first literary theory in this video that is Formalism. Formalism and Nucriticism both of them started somewhere around 1910 and both of them are kind of similar. So we'll be looking at both these literary theory together because both of them are talking about the same issues are based on the same principles. If you remember when I was talking about TS Eliot I mentioned that TS Eliot called Formalism as a lemon squeezer method and we also remember that after 1910 when this Formalism began very soon the movement called Formalism ended. It began in 1910 and somewhere around 1925 it collapsed and from that date till now we don't really use Formalism in order to analyze literary text. So in this video I'm not just going to talk about Formalism and the basic tenets I'm also going to tell you why TS Eliot called it lemon squeezer method or I'm also going to talk about the fact that why this literary theory was not able to last for a long period of time. What happened? Why did this theory collapse in such a way that today in spite of the fact that it was the first practical criticism thing nobody ever used Formalism to analyze literary text in today's scenario. So we'll be answering all these questions in this video lecture. If you are really interested to know about Formalism and clear all your concepts and doubts so stay tuned and watch this video till the end. Okay, so before we jump on and look at what Formalism is and who were the major thinkers of Formalism it's first important to understand how meaning is derived from any work or any text. Now if I ask you that okay there's the novel and you need to find out meaning from this novel. You need to tell me what the novel means. So in that case you can apply two things. Okay you have two ways to go. One way is textual meaning and the other way is contextual meaning. What is textual meaning? Textual meaning is when you're looking at the text and you're trying to analyze the words printed on the page and you're trying to understand the meaning by analyzing those words. The second way through which you can derive meaning from a text is contextual. Now what is contextual? Contextual is when you're looking at something from a context. I'll give you a very simple example. Suppose there's a story in which a girl is riding a bicycle and she falls down. Okay, now this is a simple story. If I ask you to analyze the story, if you are analyzing it from contextual point of view it totally depends how you are going to interpret the story. If you look at the story from feminist context you might say that because she was a girl and she was trying to act independently the patriarchal society did not like the idea and that is why she fell from the bicycle. Second context that you can use is Marxist. Now if you analyze the same story from Marxist context you might end up saying that the girl belonged to lower or middle class. Now because she belonged to lower class the entire society is plotting against her and that is why she fell from the bicycle because she is from a ladder she is on the lower rank of the ladder and all the upper class people try to dominate her. The third context from which you can analyze the same story is postcolonial. Now suppose the girl belongs to a colonized country may be Africa for that matter. Now if she belongs to an African country and she fell from the bicycle you might end up saying that because she was colonized and she belonged to an inferior race that is why she fell from the bicycle and all these colonizers they try to lower her identity they try to tell her that she is of an inferior race. So you can see the same story when looked at from different context can give different interpretation. Unlike contextual meaning formalism deals with textual meaning. Formalism says that let's forget about all the different context. Earlier before formalism, new criticism came how literary texts were interpreted. We used to interpret literary texts through historic or through socio-economic lenses through socio-economic context. If we are interpreting a text like hard times written by Charles Dickens we are going to look at the Victorian society the Victorian class conflict and then we are going to interpret characters and their actions. Formalism on the other hand said that let's just forget the context and let's just focus on the form. Let's focus on the text words written on the page analyze the words without considering the author's biography or without considering the socio-economic status of the society when the text was written and we should also not consider the different context through which we can analyze the text. The only way we are going to derive meaning is by analyzing the words written on the page and then trying to interpret the text. Talking specifically from the textual context and not looking at any other thing. Now that we have understood two ways through which we can derive meaning from any work that is textual and contextual it's time for us to understand what exactly is formalism. Now if you look at formalism the word formalism comes from the word form. So formalism basically means to look at the formal devices to look at the formal structure of the text and then try to understand its meaning. So formal devices would include rhythm, meter, rhyme, syntax then looking at metaphor, metonymy, all these things when you look at these formal devices and you try to take out meaning after analyzing these devices in the literary text that's what formalism is. Formalism began in Russia around 1910 and it flourished till 1920 something. Now in Russia there were two major groups. One was Moscow Linguistic Society and other was Prague Linguistic Circle. The head of Moscow Literary Linguistic Society was Mr. Roman Jakobson. Roman Jakobson is the famous man who said that the two fundamental structure of language are metaphor and metonymy. This was a question which was asked in January 2017 in net exam that who said that two structures of language are metaphor and metonymy. The other group was led by Viktor Shavosky. So if you look at the Prague Linguistic Circle the main founding member was Viktor Shavosky who wrote a beautiful essay which is known as Artists Technique. In the essay Art as Technique he said that literature is basically ordinary language, literary language that we use in literature is ordinary language but you try to defamiliarize the ordinary language. There was a beautiful saying about literature that literature gives you truth in sugar coated form. It is going to tell you truth philosophies of life but in a very sugar coated form so that you don't feel bored while reading a story or by analyzing an essay. The same thing Viktor Shavosky says he says that literary language is ordinary language but this ordinary language has been defamiliarized. You rather than saying that you are beautiful you say you are like a rose. So what you are doing you are just defamiliarizing it so that it becomes beautiful and when you try to understand these metaphors, these simile you are able to understand the work. So you don't need to look at the different context. You just need to analyze the textual matter and by analyzing textual matter you can understand the meaning. So this is the major tenet of formalism. Formalism is really an important literary theory because this literary theory marks the beginning of practical criticism and it is only after formalism and new criticism that different theories like structuralism, post-structuralism, post-modernism, post-colonialism came into being. There are a lot of other things that you must understand and read about formalism which we cover in our online course. Since it's a crash course I would not be able to look at all the other aspects which are important, all the other thinkers related to formalism. I would just recommend you to go to my website and in the online course content section under module 7 that is literary theory and cultural studies. I have given you a list of all the formalist and new critics which you must study if you are preparing for UGC Net English Literature. All these are covered in detail in my online audio course as well. So if you really want to dig deeper into this literary theory you can join our online course. Now let's understand one important fact about formalism. Why did formalism came? Like everything was going smoothly. What made thinkers like Roman Jacobson and Victor Shavosti to come up with a movement like formalism? Now in literature you must have noticed so far that every movement comes as a reaction to the previous generation. Why that romanticism came to England? Because it was a reaction against neoclassicism, the age of Pope. Age of Pope was dominant with science, technology, logic, rationality. All these romantic writers like Wordsworth, Shelley, Keith they said that because of so much scientific and logical thinking we are drifting from our own nature and it's time that we should think less about head and think more about heart. So lessen the influence of head and give way to your imagination. And this is how romanticism as a movement came as a reaction to neoclassicism. Similar fashion, if you look at the Russian society of 1910 you'll find out that at that time USSR was the major influential force in Russia. And what is the main ideology that they followed? They followed Marxism. Now Marxism has a habit of looking at everything from a context, from the context of class. If they're going to look at any writer, even if Shakespeare who wrote 300 years back they're going to look at the plays like King Lear, Julius Caesar from the lenses of class conflict. They're going to see how the class structure was prevalent even in the time of Shakespeare. So all these writers who were actually living during this period in Russia dominated by the cultural context, the class context of USSR they were looking forward to come up with a movement that could have been a reaction against the existing prevalent thought that was Marxism. So new criticism or formalism came as a reaction to the USSR ideology. Formalist thinkers said that we don't need to look at any play from the context of class. We are going to only look at the text and try to take out the meaning. So rather than looking from different cultural social prospects let's not forget the aesthetics of a literary text. So what is aesthetics in Hindi? Aesthetics simply means Sandhariya Karan. So the literature which is beautiful, we are going to look at it from different context. So you can very well see how formalism as a movement came up in Russia during USSR period. But then you might have a question that why did formalism not last for a long period? Now, formalist people they were extremists. They said that we don't need to look at any context. We don't need to know the author's biography. Neither we need to know about the social political structure when the text was written. We need to only focus on the text, only focus on the form, syntax, rhythm, meter, that's it. Now as we know that literature is a cultural being. Literature is something which cannot be separated from culture. And that is why formalism did not go a long way. Because if you separate literature from the cultural context then literature loses its influence, loses its value. And that is why formalism came as a movement against a reaction against Marxism and USSR ideology. And then within no time it was gone from the world. So with that note I would like to end this video lecture. I tried to talk about the rise and fall of formalism as a literary movement. Or if you can say as a literary theory there are a lot of other interesting theories that we are going to touch in the upcoming videos. So if you have not yet subscribed to the channel then it's high time you should do that. Also click on the bell icon just near to the subscribe button so that you are notified when I post my next video. We are going to see you very soon in the next video lecture wherein I am going to discuss the most important and the most frightening theory that is structuralism. So stay tuned to arpitaakarwa.com and keep loving literature.