Does formalism work?
Does formalism actually work? A way in which we read literature only be letting the text stand alone as is. Sounds great in theory. The words on the page are the only thing that matters, what is good or bad is determined only by the black curves of the consonants and vowels of the page. The intention of the author is completely irrelevant.
Can this actually work? Can a reader completely discount everything from the intention of the author to his own emotional and personal responses to the text? Can this work?
If formalists only look at the text, and solely the text, it would seem as if the formalist would all be getting the same conclusions about the text. But can this really happen? No. There is no way everyone is going to come to an unanimous agreement about a text even if all personal and emotional responses have been discounted. And what about the intentions of the author? Who cares if the author is dead or is not there to recount his intentions with the piece, shouldn’t the author be taken into account here? After all, the author did write the piece. I feel that you can’t get more in touch with the writing if you don’t look more at the author of the piece itself. Formalism just doesn’t seem to make sense.
Maybe I’m just a romantic at heart…
1 comment:
Yes, most of us are romantics at heart. To some degree the formalists are dealing with a very difficult question by discounting it. How can we tell the author's intentions? This question isn't solved just by saying we get in touch with the author through the work. How do we know the author is trustworthy? How do we know the author isn't trying to fool us, or what if the author's intention is to hide him or herself from us? Similarly, we have to ask whether works can be literature without authors. What about "Anonymous" as an author? Do we know or care about the intentions of "anonymous." Or what about folk tales that are developed over immense periods of time by many hundreds or thousands of people, and sometimes by multiple cultures. In what sense do we say a folk tale has an intention? But because it doesn't have an intention in any simple sense, does that mean it doesn't have a meaning? And if it still does have a meaning, where does that meaning come from, if not from intention. Does it come from the reader, or does it come from the tale itself?
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