The Study On Shklovsky’s Poetics

During the late19th century and early20th century, both Europe and Russia were inviolent turmoil. Russia is especially enveloped in an atmosphere of terror at the eve ofOctober Revolution. Led by Shklovsky and Jacobson,a group of college students firstraised the banner of revolt in the area of literature and art, launched a massive revolutionand brought new vitality to the development of Western Poetics in the20th century.Shklovsky’s poetic theory consists of Russian formalism and Post-Russianformalism. He broke with the convention and launched a violent attack on the grossintervetion of vulgar Sociology on literature and art. He tried to break out of this cage toestablish an independent Kingdom of literature and art. His later theories had beenmodified and developed, but still maintained a difference from Sociology by carryingforward the core theories and the aim of exploring lierature in their own value. What’smore, his theoretical perspective already changed from the previous healing ofindividuals into salvation to all humanity.Shklovsky’s poetic theory has profited from the development of Poetics andLinguistics in both Russia and Europe. In Russia, literature and art were becomingrepository of disciplines such as psychology, sociology, political science, and reduced toa means of achieving practical utilitarian purpose, which directly stimulatedShklovsky’s concern on the independent value of literature, led to his breaking withtraditional criticism above, then brought a shock on Russian literarary community inearly20th century. Meanwhile, General Linguistics theory also played an instrumentalrole in this development. Shklovsky’s theory based on his tutor Kurdish’s socio-Psycholinguistics. With his influence, Shklovsky also focused on the aesthetic psychologicaleffects of language as well as the intergration of synchronic and diachronic linguistic.In the US and Europe, Shklovsky had not only fulfilled a "dialogue" with Aristotle, butalso got a direct inspiration from the "irrational" demands of aesthetic modernity.Defamiliaration (отстранение)is at the very core of Shklovsky’s theory, with whichShklovsky constructed his poetic and narrative theory, and realized the obscuroty ofpoetic language and delay of plot. Previously, Shklovsky focused on the text, strongly rejected what trational criticism emphasized, endowed an ontological sense to “form” byclaiming that it was the only reasonable existence representing literary works. Later, inspite of introducing "content", he cared not about Utilitarian relationships in real life, butthe"golden century" of human poetic residence. Defamiliarization theory charactered byits pursuit of "strange" artistic expression, and essentially, it emphasized the creativequalities of art. Logic implementation process can be rendered as defamiliarization�'"Automation"�'defamiliarization, and readers are jointly involved in this creative activity.Shklovsky had upended the traditional concept on dichotomy of forms and content, thenendowed form (форма) with a new connotation, which was consitently changed, from theinitial stress on the importance of form to the presentation of formal ontology, later to theunification of form and content. Shklovsky later adopted the word structure (структура)to replace form, and maintained a more close and complicated relationship withStructuralism. On the premise of simpifying Structuralist theory, he made a comparisonand stressed superiority of his own theory. Actually the real difference between them wasthose of ontology and methodology, concreteness and abstractness, creative and mechanic.Defamiliaration aimed to free the imprisoned humanity by restoring the art’sself-discipline. Shklovsky echoed the "art for art" programme of aestheticism, but he hadgone much further in emphazing the method of art and handling the relationship betweenart and lifeShklovsky’s theory of poetic language received more concern than his narrativetheory, for it challenged the traditional role of poetic language as tools and emphasizedon its obscuroty. Under the influence of defamiliarization, he elevated the poeticlanguage to poetic onological existence, and separated poetic language from allnon-literary languages including everyday language. Only by this separation couldpoetic language be achived. At the same time, influenced by Kurdish’s socio-Psycholinguistics, Shklovsky achieved a unity of synchronic and diachronic in poeticlanguage with priority on diachronic, which not only confirmed its linguistic basis fromKurdish, but also confirmed its distance from Saussure’s General Linguistics theories.Shklovsky made Defamiliaration the only criteria as to whether it is poetic languange ornot. Readers could feel free from the sensible videos created by poetic language, and letfree the humanity covered by complicated daily life. On this point, he was totally differentfrom Jacobson, antother leader of Russian Stucturalism. Both took the restoration of “literariness” an their ultimate task, but their different oppinions on relationship betweenpoetic and linguistic compelled them to go their own way in explorating the “literariness”,one favoring humanism, the other scientism. Moreover, British-American new criticismechos Shklovsky’s theory. Nearly appeared at the same time, and both studying poeticlanguage, they had shown a lot similarities and differences.In fact, shklovsky also made great achievement in narrative theory which used toequal his poetic language theory but later became the main object of his study. Westernnarrative theory has a long history, but shklovsky launched a significant impact on itsdevelopment in the20th century. Especially in the two transitions of Western narrativetheory happened in the1960s and1970-80s, shklovsky always played some kind of leadingroles, which highlighted his prospective viewpoints. Accompanied with the disenchantmentof form and plot, the research focusing on plot and form of the text body reached its peak inFrance during the sixties or seventies of the20th century. Later, shklovsky’s poetics beganto return to "history", his narrative theory changed accordingly, and begin to pay attention tothe themes of literary works. Since the1980s and90s, the West narrative theory graduallygave up studing methods of structuralism, started to combine internal and external researchorganically, carried on researches by making use of such disciplines as feminism, newHistoricism and so on. While concerning the plot structure, shklovsky later made uniqueillustration on narrative time, narrative character and so on. The tempo of narrative time canenhance the delay effect of plot. It is different from the general fast or slow time presence inreality, and it reflected the narrative features with potential and reality, contraditoriness anddualism. Theories of narrative character and narrative time are were closely associated, anddifferent characters in the same works did not always belong to the same era. They, like thewriters, were "out of their place", so they need to explore their place. In essence, this is anexploration of the "golden century" pursuied by Defamiliaration theories.Making a general survey of shklovsky’s poetic theory, although there existssome"Achilles heel", such as his early strong objection to "content" and sometheoretical paradox, no one can overlook his important status in Western poetics of the20th century. Therefore, an open, dialectical examinatory attitude should be adhered toreseaches on shklovsky’s poetic theory.