Critic speak is tough, but we've got you covered.
Quote :"On Realism in Art"
The object of a science of literature is not literature, but literariness—that is, that which makes a given work a work of literature. Until now literary historians have preferred to act like the policeman who, intending to arrest a certain person, would, at any opportunity, seize any and all persons who chanced into the apartment, as well as those who passed along the street. The literary historians used everything—anthropology, psychology, politics, philosophy. Instead of a science of literature, they created a conglomeration of homespun disciplines.
Literary critics and historians have been getting the study of literature way wrong. That's because they try to explain literature by looking at it through the lens of a whole bunch of totally unrelated fields—which is like, the opposite of science. Why would we need to know philosophy in order to understand literature? Why do we need to know psychology to read a poem? Why do we need to have a good grasp of politics or anthropology, for shmoop's sake? Hello. These things have nothing to do with literature.
In order to understand literature, we need to throw all of these other things out of the window. Instead, we need to focus on something called "literariness." Which is what, again? It's what makes a text "literature" and not just some words someone threw on a page.
We probably all agree that there's a difference between a news article and a poem, right? Well, what makes a poem different from a news article is that it possesses this special, magical, magnificent thing called "literariness," which a news article does not have. So our job as Formalists is to study this thing "literariness," and figure out what it's made of and how it works—forget going and reading a whole bunch of philosophy or politics or anthropology to try to help explain a work of literature. Explain how? Pshah!
Jakobson's doing something here that the Formalists totally love doing. And that is the high exalted act of "bringing the focus back to the literary text." In other words, he's saying that we just need to focus on the poem, or novel, or play. And that's it. We need to read closely. For what? That's right: "literariness." That thing that makes a text "literature."
Notice how Jakobson, like Eikhenbaum, is talking about literary criticism as "a science" of literature. Didn't we tell you these guys were obsessed with being scientists? It's those white lab coats they're envious of. They all want to be stylin' that lab coat, yo.