Formalism and Marxism 3rd ed (New Accents)

193 Pages·2003·2.82 MB·English

by  Tony Bennett

Formalism and Marxism
Russian Formalism and Marxist criticism had a seismic impact on
twentieth-century literary theory and the shockwaves are still felt
today. First published in 1979, Tony Bennett’s Formalism and
Marxism created its own reverberations by offering a ground-
breaking new interpretation of the Formalists’ achievements and
demanding a new way forward in Marxist criticism.
The author first introduces and reviews the work of the Russian
Formalists, a group of theorists who made an extraordinarily vital
contribution to literary criticism in the decade following the
October Revolution of 1917. Placing the work of key figures in
context and addressing such issues as aesthetics, linguistics and the
category of literature, literary form and function and literary
evolution, Bennett argues that the Formalists’ concerns provided
the basis for a radically historical approach to the study of
literature. Bennett then turns to the situation of Marxist criticism
and sketches the risks it has run in becoming overly entangled with
the concerns of traditional aesthetics. He forcefully argues that
through a serious and sympathetic reassessment of the Formalists
and their historical approach, Marxist critics might find their way
back on to the terrain of politics, where they and their work
belong.
Addressing such crucial questions as ‘What is literature?’ or
‘How should it be studied and to what end?’, Formalism and
Marxism explores ideas which should be considered by any
student or reader of literature and provides a particular challenge
to those interested in Marxist criticism. Now with a new
afterword, this classic text still offers the best available starting
point for those new to the field, as well as representing a crucial
intervention in twentieth-century literary theory.
ii
Tony Bennett is Professor of Sociology at the Open University,
UK. He is the author of Culture: A Reformer’s Science (1998) and
Outside Literature (1990).
IN THE SAME SERIES
Alternative Shakespeares 1, Ed. John Drakakis
Alternative Shakespeares 2, Ed. Terence Hawkes
Post-Colonial Shakespeares, Ed. Ania Loomba and Martin Orkin
Re-reading English, Ed. Peter Widdowson
Rewriting English, Janet Batsleer, Tony Davies, R.O’Rouke and
Chris Weedon
English and Englishness, B.Doyle
Linguistics and the Novel, Roger Fowler
Language and Style, E.L.Epstein
The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama, Keir Elam
Structuralism and Semiotics, Terence Hawkes
Superstructuralism, Richard Harland
Deconstruction ed. 2, Christopher Norris
Formalism and Marxism, Tony Bennett
Critical Practice, Catherine Belsey
Dialogism, Michael Holquist
Dialogue and Difference: English for the Nineties, Ed. Peter
Brooker/Peter Humm
Literature, Politics and Theory, Ed. F.Barker, P.Hulme, M.Iversen
and D.Loxley
Popular Fictions: Essays in Literature and History, Ed. Peter
Humm, Paul Stigant and Peter Widdowson
Criticism and Society, Ed. Imre Salusinszky
Fantasy, Rosemary Jackson
Science Fiction: Its Criticism and Teaching, Patrick Parrinder
Sexual Fiction, Maurice Charney
Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics, Shlomith Rimmon-
Kenan
iv
Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction,
Patricia Waugh
Telling Stories: A Theoretical Analysis of Narrative Fiction, Steven
Cohan and Linda Shires
Poetry as Discourse, Anthony Easthope
The Politics of Postmodernism, Linda Hutcheon
Subculture, ed. 2, Dick Hebdige
Reading Television, John Fiske and John Hartley
Orality and Literacy, Walter J.Ong
Adult Comics, An Introduction, Roger Sabin
The Unusable Past, Russell J.Reising
The Empire Writes Back, Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen
Tiffin
Translation Studies ed. 2, Susan Bassnett
Studying British Cultures, Susan Bassnett
Literature and Propaganda, A.P.Foulkes
Reception Theory, Robert C.Holub
Psychoanalytic Criticism, Elizabeth Wright
The Return of the Reader, Elizabeth Freund
Sexual/Textual Politics, Toril Moi
Making a Difference, Ed. Gayle Greene and Coppélia Kahn
AVAILABLE AS A COMPLETE SET (in Hardback only):
ISBN 0415-29116-X
Tony Bennett
Formalism and Marxism
LONDON AND NEW YORK
To my father and mother, with thanks
First published 1979 by Methuen & Co. Ltd
Reprinted three times
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition first published 2003
by
Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York NY 10001
© 1979, 2003 Tony Bennett
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication
Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication
Data A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-203-10117-0 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-34472-3 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-32150-6 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-32151-4 (pbk)
CONTENTS
GENERAL EDITOR’S PREFACE x
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xii
PART ONE Formalism revisited 1
1 Criticism and literature 3
Questions of language 3
Questions of literature 5
Questions of aesthetics 8
2 Formalism and Marxism 15
Russian Formalism: theoretical perspectives 15
Reassessing Formalism 21
Historical perspectives on Russian 23
Formalism
New directions in Marxist criticism 30
3 Russian Formalism: clearing the ground 35
Linguistics and literature 35
The question of literariness: criticism and its 37
object
The system and its elements: form and 40
function
Against the ‘metaphysic of the text’ 45
The problem of literary evolutlon 48
4 Formalism and beyond 53
viii
The accomplishments of Formalism 53
Saussure’s magic carpet 56
Bakhtin’s historical poetics 61
‘Literature’ as a historical category 66
PART TWO Marxist criticism: from aesthetics to politics 75
5 Marxism versus aesthetics 77
Formalism: a lost heritage 77
Marxist criticism: aesthetics, politics and 80
history
Literature’s ‘non-said’ 86
6 Science, literature and ideology 89
On practices 89
On ideology 90
On science 95
On art and literature 96
7 The legacy of aesthetics 103
The lessons of Formalism 103
A new idealism 106
Criticism and politics 111
8 Work in progress 117
The post-Althusserians 117
Modes of literary production 122
Literature and the social process 127
9 Conclusion 137
AFTERWORD 143
NOTES 157
ix
BIBLIOGRAPHY 167
INDEX 173