What is the difference between fabula and sjuzhet?

Fabula is the raw chronological sequence of events, while sjuzhet is the way those events are arranged and presented in the actual narrative; the distinction underlies later narratology's separation of story and discourse.

Why was Russian Formalism suppressed?

Its emphasis on autonomous literary form was judged incompatible with Soviet demands for socially and ideologically engaged criticism, and the movement was forced to disband by the end of the 1920s.

Russian Formalism

Russian Formalism was an early-twentieth-century movement that sought to make literary study a science by focusing on the formal devices that distinguish literary from ordinary language.

Definition

A school of literary theory, active in Russia roughly 1915-1930, that treated the literary work as the sum of its formal devices and made 'literariness' rather than literature its object of study.

Scope

This topic covers the Moscow Linguistic Circle and the Petersburg group OPOYAZ, their concept of 'literariness', the central notion of defamiliarization, and the distinction between fabula (story) and sjuzhet (plot). It treats the movement's shift from a device-centred to a more functional and historical understanding of literary form, and its eventual suppression and influence on later structuralism.

Core questions

What makes a verbal text 'literary'?
How do specific devices defamiliarize ordinary perception and language?
How should the relation between story and its narrative arrangement be analyzed?
Can literary scholarship be a self-sufficient science of form?

Key theories

Defamiliarization (ostranenie): Shklovsky's thesis that the purpose of art is to make objects 'unfamiliar', restoring perception dulled by habit, so that artistic devices that prolong and complicate perception define the literary.
Literariness and the formal method: Eichenbaum's programmatic account of how the Formalists shifted the object of study from literature to 'literariness', analyzing texts as systems of devices with their own evolving functions.

History

Formed around 1915-1916, the Formalists reacted against symbolist and biographical criticism. Shklovsky's 'Art as Technique' (1917) became the movement's manifesto, and Eichenbaum (1926) defended the 'formal method' against critics. Under increasing ideological pressure the movement was effectively shut down by the late 1920s, but its ideas were transmitted through Jakobson to the Prague Circle and Western structuralism, and recovered for English readers by Erlich (1955).

Debates

Form versus history and ideology: Soviet Marxist critics attacked Formalism for ignoring the social and ideological dimensions of literature; later Formalists themselves moved toward more historical and functional accounts of literary change.

Key figures

Viktor Shklovsky
Boris Eichenbaum
Roman Jakobson
Yuri Tynyanov

Seminal works

shklovsky1917
eichenbaum1926
erlich1955

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between fabula and sjuzhet?: Fabula is the raw chronological sequence of events, while sjuzhet is the way those events are arranged and presented in the actual narrative; the distinction underlies later narratology's separation of story and discourse.
Why was Russian Formalism suppressed?: Its emphasis on autonomous literary form was judged incompatible with Soviet demands for socially and ideologically engaged criticism, and the movement was forced to disband by the end of the 1920s.