About this title: The 1925 literary foundation of Russian formalism. Shklovsky's book anticipates much structuralist and post-structuralist thought, and the questions it poses concerning the nature of fiction are as vital today as they were in the 1920s.
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Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press, Elmwood Park
Date Published: 1990
Description: First USA edition. Translated in its entirety for the first time, this work, first published in 1925 and a few years later suppressed by the Soviets, anticipates structuralism and post-structuralism. Fine in near fine dustwrapper a trifle creased at edges. read more
Description: New. PLEASE NOTE: All books are promptly shipped from our UK warehouse using Royal Mail International Priority mail. Heavier or more expensive books are shipped with a TRACKING NUMBER. Professional and reliable bookseller (est.1987). read more
"Viktor Shklovksy (1893-1984) was a Russian literary theorist and critic who published Theory of Prose in 1925. He is considered a Formalist, anticipating structuralism and post-structuralism although being neither of these. He wrote, "If the complex life of many people takes place entirely on the level of the unconscious, then it's as if this life had never been." To bring life to the level of consciousness, Shklovsky believed that art is critically important in that "art makes a stone feel stony." Art "enstranges" (his term) an object, making the familiar unfamiliar so that we can perceive and experience it. "Art is a means of experiencing the process of creativity; the artifact itself is quite unimportant." Art removes an object from the sphere of automatized perception. Therefore art is more closely related to particularization than generalization (satisfying what Carlyle called "our longing for the concrete). Shkolvsky seems to be intent on leading us to see art as artifact by providing insights into its creation, these insights then leading us to view life differently and more fully.
The prose that Shklovsky discusses is primarily narrative prose, fiction. His treatise is fascinating, and he uses works by Tolstoy, Dickens, Sterne, Bely, and Conan Doyle to discuss plot and its possible variations, expanding on the use of narrative threads, linear and cyclical subplots, methods of delaying resolution, the gradual development of characterizations, and the playing off against each other of dyads and triads of personalities. His arguments are cogent and convincing, not only shedding light on various narrative techniques but also providing the reader with insights and strategies for reading works of narrative. I found the work, admittedly occasionally rather dry and scholarly, to be fascinating and a great help in providing insights into the craft of writing as well as the skill of reading, and already I have been using Shklovsky's observations in my reading of Mervyn Peake's huge Gormenghast Trilogy."
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