What is formalism?

Formalism is a method of literary criticism, starting from the form of text, and then discussing the cultural significance implied by this literary form, the social conditions that produced this form, or the historical process that produced this kind of literature. Formalism is not a western patent, and China's literary theory has been tirelessly exploring the formal laws of literature and art since ancient times.

Today's semiotics, narratology, stylistics, rhetoric, etc. It is a branch of formalism, and New Criticism, Russian Formalism, Prague School, Structuralism and Post-Structuralism Semiotics are the formalism schools that entered China in turn in the second half of the 20th century.

Extended data:

Formalism broke out suddenly in the early 20th century, initiated by theorists who lived in different countries and wrote in different languages: Eliot didn't know shklovsky, Pierce didn't know Saussure's thoughts all his life, and Foster didn't know tomashevsky's works. Perhaps only Ogden and Richards knew a little about what was happening in various countries in Cambridge, the cultural core of Europe and America at that time.

Ogden & I Richards, meaning meaning. These formalists appeared at the same time only because the whole theoretical circle felt the pressure of modernity and thus made a natural response.

The pressure of modernity comes from multiple sources: the prosperity of literary and artistic creation at the turn of the century has forced major changes in literary and artistic theory; The rise of modern lifestyle is an outdated way of thinking; The great development of modern physics also makes all disciplines feel the pressure of "physical envy".

In particular, all the progress of physics depends on mathematics, which makes thinkers try their best to find the same methodology to deal with various disciplines and find the inside information behind the world. It has become a popular trend for a period of time to "simulate or even copy the existing mathematical and physical methods and build new literary theories and critical models".

Baidu Encyclopedia-Formal Theory