Two groups of guys got together in Russia in the 1910s. Yes, groups of guys get together all the time of course (in Russia and elsewhere), and nothing usually comes of it except maybe a game of bee...

When we talk about Formalism, we can't not talk about Viktor Shklovsky. Even if his name is kind of hard to say. He started out as part of the St. Petersburg OPOYAZ circle and came up with some se...

A big reason the Formalists got together in the first place was because they were sick and tired of the state of literary criticism in Russia in the early 1900s (and let's face it, people in Russia...

Formalism is dead. Long live Formalism! That about sums up the state of the theory. That's because, on the one hand, Formalism is Really Dead. It began dying not long after it was born. Once dictat...

What is literature? A work of literature is made up of a whole bunch of literary "devices" that function to defamiliarize the familiar. Literature gives us a fresh pair of eyes to see the world wit...