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CARA, EVELITA V. October 3, 2020

Summary of Boris Eichenbaum’s The Formal Method

Boris Eichenbaum is a Russian Formalist who was an original member of the Society for

the Study of Poetic Language (Opoyaz) which was founded in 1916. His article is a summary of

the works of the Russian Formalists. The Formalists treat literature as autonomous from the outside

world and their main concern is the scientific analysis of its form (Bertens 2013).

In The Formal Method, Eichenbaum discussed the following topics: the distinction

between practical language and poetic language; the concept of form and its treatment as content;

and the importance of rhythm and verse form in verse speech.

As the Russian formalists are concerned about the “literariness” of the text, or "what makes

a given work a literary work" (Jakobson in Eichenbaum 1926), the starting point of the analysis is

distinguishing the difference between poetic language and practical language. It was important to

distinguish this, according to Eichenbaum, because it is the “foundation for building a poetics.”

This distinction, Bertens (2013) stated, is similar to giving the difference of the poetry’s language

from the language of a newspaper or magazine article. While the latter is primarily used for mere

communication, where language resources such as sounds or morphological segments have no

autonomous value, the former’s language is not for ordinary communication and its language

resources have autonomous value in the text (Jabukinski in Eichenbaum 1926). This means that

linguistic resources like sounds are significant in poetic language. Eichenbaum also cited Brik who

said that the repetition of sounds or lines in the verse speech has an “aesthetic role in its own right.”

Therefore, the repetition itself has its individual meaning.

Moreover, Bertens (2013) added that in poetry, ordinary language is defamiliarized through

the use of devices, which is the “secret to literariness.” This is done through Shklovsky’s concept

of Defamiliarization, the art of making familiar things unfamiliar. Additionally, it was pointed by

Selden, Widdowson, and Brooker (2005) that what “distinguishes literature from ‘practical’

language is its constructed quality” (31). Poetic language is distorted or deformed so that the

readers will focus on that distortion and find its meaning. Selden et. al (2005) gave the lines from

Donne’s A Nocturnall upon St Lucies Day as examples. The change in momentum in the lines and
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the syntactical differences were the deviation/distortion that created the “aesthetic significance.”

As Jakobson (in Bertens 2013) stated, poetry has a heart for linguistic equivalence that it chooses

words with the same sound, same letter, same grammatical structure, and so on. Once something

deviates from this linguistic equivalence, it calls attention for examination, thereby putting it in

the center stage for scrutiny.

Meanwhile, in terms of distinguishing the language of fiction, Bertens cited Boris

Tomashevski who said that the distinction lies in the difference in the presentation of fabula, the

story-stuff. For example, in detective novels, ordinary presentation of fabula would be merely

saying who the killer is at the beginning of the story. However, when the author manipulates the

fabula, the killer may not be revealed immediately and so the suspense is maximized. This, in

effect, produces a difference in representation giving the syuzhet, the plot, a defamiliarizing effect.

So like the rhyme in poetry, syuzhet is placed at the center. And because syuzhet has the

defamiliarizing effect, it is the literary device in the text since the fabula is just waiting to be

“manipulated” (Selden et. al 2005).

The second point of discussion is the concept of form and its function as content. The

Formalists reject the idea of the “form-content” relationship for they believe that form is content.

For them, the form is concrete, dynamic, substantive in itself, and unqualified by any correlation.

Therefore, the form of a text can be analyzed as it is because it is autonomous from the outside

world where it exists. Eichenbaum added that the presence of “works with bared construction” (i.e

Cervantes’ Don Quixote which was not fully motivated as motivation and procedure was not

integrated into it; and Sterne’s Tristram Shandy which violates the “usual form”) is enough reason

to analyze the construction of the form as it is because the form itself communicates content.

Through the emphasis in construction, texts that are once misunderstood (or whose value were not

seen i.e. Sterne’s Tristram Shandy) acquired a new meaning of its own when Sklovskiij analyzed

the novels. In addition, Selden et. al (2005) stated that in Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, the story’s plot

is the deviation from the norm to interrupt and delay the narration. Thus, the “digressions,

typographical games, displacement of parts of the book (preface, dedication, etc.) and extended

descriptions are all devices to make us attend to the novel’s form” (36). Similarly, Bertens (2013)
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pointed out that the “way” a text is constructed, the manner of its construction is what matters in

the Formalist’s analysis. Thus, the form is given high regard in the Formal Method.

The last topic that Eichebaum discussed is rhythm’s significance in the verse speech. The

Russian Formalists treated rhythm as “the structural base from which all elements of verse ̶

nonacoustical and acoustical ̶ derived definition” (13). Based on the analysis of the dominant

rhythmic procedure of the verse, the “work’s concrete rhythm” can be revealed (Tomatsevskij in

Eichenbaum 1926). In here, metrics, which were once the highlight in the analysis of texts, only

served as the alphabet of the verse and the focus becomes the verse itself along with its rhythmic

procedure (Eichenbaum 1926). Thus, the verse form is treated as the “genuine content of verse

speech” (Tomatsevskij in Eichenbaum 1926) which means that the form itself is the content.

As Bertens stated, because the formalists believe that literary texts are autonomous from

the outside world, the determination of the “dominant” orientation or accompanying function, or

in this case, procedure, will reveal that the text is oriented towards itself, bringing the “form” at

the center. Moreover, the idea of the dominant is somewhat similar to the structuralists’ idea of

foregrounding, which they used to replace defamiliarization (Bertens 2013). In foregrounding,

while an element is being foregrounded, the other is being set in the background. Thus, the

foregrounded element becomes dominant. In the case of poetry’ analysis, what is foregrounded is

the rhythm which then reveals its kind of verse (i.e. tonic-metrical verse, intonational-melodic

verse, or harmonic verse).

Additionally, according to Selden et. al (2005), the idea of the “dominant” also helped the

formalists to explain literary history as poetic forms change and develop because of the “shifting

dominant.” Meanwhile, Bertens believes that is through the process of defamiliarization that

Russian Formalists were (somewhat) able to explain literary change. The development and change

in literature could be said as a product of defamiliarization where literature tries to “renew” itself.

This, we can say, is an achievement for the Russian Formalists, because even though they are

treating the text without the influence of outside forces, literary change is not neglected.

In conclusion, Eichenbaum’s article showed how the Formalists treated literature as a

scientific field of inquiry where language and its devices and resources are scrutinized for its own

value, and where form receives high regard as it conveys a meaning of its own, a meaning that is
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autonomous from any influence outside the text for it is based on how the devices and techniques

were utilized in the text.

References

Bertens, Hans. 2013. Literary Theory: The Basics. New York: Routledge.

Eichenbaum, Boris. 1926. "The Formal Method." In Literary Theory: An Anthology, edited by
Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan, 7-14. USA: Blackwell Publishing.

Selden, Raman, Peter Widdowson, and Peter Brooker. 2005. A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary
Literary Theory. United Kingdom: Pearson.