# Literariness Literature I · Introduction to Literary Theory · https://tryals.app/learn/literature-i/literariness ## The Property, Not the List In 1921 Roman Jakobson wrote a sentence that founded a discipline: *the object of literary science is not literature but **literariness**: that is, what makes a given work a literary work*. The move is deliberate. Instead of arguing about which books belong on the shelf, study the property that makes any stretch of language work as literature. The Russian Formalists — Shklovsky, Eichenbaum, Tynyanov, Jakobson — proposed that the property is **deviation with a purpose**. Ordinary language is transparent: you look through it at what it says and forget the words. Literary language makes you notice the words, and the noticing is the point. ### Defamiliarisation Viktor Shklovsky's "Art as Technique" (1917) gives the mechanism, *ostranenie*, usually translated **defamiliarisation** or estrangement: > Habitualisation devours works, clothes, furniture, one's wife, and the fear of war… Art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to make the stone **stony**. The technique of art is to make objects unfamiliar, to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception. Two claims are packed in there. The first is about **perception**: habit makes us stop seeing, and art restores seeing by obstructing it. The second is about **time**: the difficulty is not a side effect but the method, because a perception that takes longer is a perception that happens at all. Shklovsky's example is Tolstoy describing a flogging or a property law entirely without the usual names, so the reader has to see the thing. This gives a measurable, if crude, test. Take a poem and a prose paraphrase that says the same thing. The paraphrase runs twelve words and the stanza runs forty-eight: the stanza spends four times as long on the same content, and the surplus is where the literary work is happening. ### The poetic function Jakobson's later, sharper version comes from his model of communication. Any utterance involves six factors, an **addresser**, an **addressee**, a **context**, a **message**, a **contact** and a **code**: and each supports a function. When the utterance orients itself toward **the message as such**, the poetic function dominates. His formula: *the poetic function projects the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection into the axis of combination*. Selection works by equivalence, choosing between *child*, *kid*, *youngster*. Combination normally works by contiguity, stringing words along. Poetry makes the combined sequence obey equivalence too: metre makes positions equivalent, rhyme makes sounds equivalent, parallelism makes phrases equivalent. That is what verse *is*, structurally. ### What broke it, and what survived The Formalist programme has a fatal objection: the same devices show up everywhere. Advertising defamiliarises, jokes foreground the message, weather forecasts fall into metre by accident. And texts move in and out of the literary category with no change to their language at all, a legal deposition, a diary, a set of letters. Stanley Fish's reply is that literariness is conferred by a **way of reading**, not found in the text. What survived is the analytic vocabulary. Foregrounding, device, defamiliarisation and the projection principle remain the sharpest tools for describing *what a text is doing*, even once you stop believing they define what literature is. > **Common pitfall:** taking defamiliarisation as a synonym for "strange" or "difficult". Obscurity that yields nothing on the second pass has not renewed anyone's perception. Shklovsky's criterion is the recovery of the sensation of the thing, difficulty in the service of seeing, not in place of it. ## Practice questions 9 of this lesson's 13 practice questions, with answers. The full set is in the app. ### 1. The Moscow Linguistic Circle was founded in 1915 and Jakobson formulated literariness in 1921. How many years separate them? **Answer:** 6 **Why:** **Six years.** The gap is worth noticing: the circles came first and the slogan afterwards. Formalism began as a group of linguists and students reading verse technically, and the programmatic statements were written to describe work already being done rather than to launch it. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/literature-i/literariness/the-moscow-linguistic-circle-was-founded-in-1915-and-jakobson ### 2. Why does Shklovsky say art makes forms difficult? A. Because complex artistic structures are inherently more valuable than simple ones B. Because habit stops us perceiving, and obstruction restores perception C. Because serious literature ought to deliberately exclude naive, ordinary readers D. Because a richer and more ornate vocabulary demonstrates greater technical skill **Answer:** B. Because habit stops us perceiving, and obstruction restores perception **Why:** Because **habitualisation** makes us stop seeing what we see every day. Slowing the reader down restores the perception that habit has automated. Nothing in the argument says complex art is inherently better or that ordinary readers should be excluded; an obstruction that yields no renewed perception is just an obstruction. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/literature-i/literariness/why-does-shklovsky-say-art-makes-forms-difficult ### 3. Sort each phrase by whether it describes PRACTICAL language or POETIC language in the Formalist account. **Answer:** - Practical: You look through the words at what they say, Efficiency of transmission is the criterion, Paraphrase loses nothing that matters - Poetic: The sequence is organised by equivalence, The message draws attention to itself, Repetition of sound is structurally load-bearing **Why:** The paraphrase test is the practical one to remember. If a message survives rewording intact, the wording was a vehicle; if rewording destroys it, the wording was the thing. Most utterances are somewhere between, which is exactly why literariness resists being a yes-or-no property. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/literature-i/literariness/sort-each-phrase-by-whether-it-describes-practical-language-or-poetic ### 4. Jakobson held that the poetic function is present only in poems. **Answer:** False **Why:** **False.** The poetic function is one of six functions and can dominate anywhere, his own example is the slogan "I like Ike", whose whole force is phonetic equivalence. What makes a poem is that the function dominates, not that other utterances lack it. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/literature-i/literariness/jakobson-held-that-the-poetic-function-is-present-only-in-poems ### 5. Which are consequences of Jakobson's projection formula? A. Poetry cannot use narrative sequence B. Parallelism makes phrases equivalent C. Metre makes positions in the line equivalent D. Rhyme makes sounds at different points equivalent **Answer:** B. Parallelism makes phrases equivalent; C. Metre makes positions in the line equivalent; D. Rhyme makes sounds at different points equivalent **Why:** Metre, rhyme and parallelism are all ways of making a *sequence* obey the logic of *selection*, which is exactly the projection Jakobson describes. Narrative sequence is untouched by the formula, epic is the obvious counter-example to the first option. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/literature-i/literariness/which-are-consequences-of-jakobsons-projection-formula ### 6. Jakobson defines the object of literary study as literariness rather than literature itself. Why does this shift matter for how a theorist handles non-canonical texts? A. It restricts literary science strictly to examining the established canon of poetic verse. B. It proves that ordinary everyday utterances lack the formal devices found in canonical art. C. It requires establishing whether an author intended their writing to serve as fine literature. D. It directs analysis to how language functions rather than which texts hold cultural prestige. **Answer:** D. It directs analysis to how language functions rather than which texts hold cultural prestige. **Why:** Confusing the formal mechanisms of language with prestige or authorial intention misses Jakobson's structural focus. Shifting the object from 'literature' to 'literariness' means any text exhibiting functional deviation qualifies for study regardless of status. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/literature-i/literariness/jakobson-defines-the-object-of-literary-study-as-literariness-rather ### 7. Arrange the steps of a Formalist reading in the order they are performed. **Answer:** 1. Identify the devices the text foregrounds 2. Describe how each device obstructs automatic reading 3. Relate the devices to the norms they deviate from 4. Explain the work's effect as the sum of its devices **Why:** The order matters because each step supplies what the next needs. Naming a deviation requires a norm, and the norm is historical. Tynyanov's addition to the programme was that the norms shift, so a device that estranged in 1820 may be entirely automatic by 1900. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/literature-i/literariness/arrange-the-steps-of-a-formalist-reading-in-the-order-they-are ### 8. Shklovsky's test is whether a reader's perception is slowed. If a plain sentence takes one unit of attention, roughly how many units does he claim the estranged version should take? **Answer:** 4 (within ±1.5) **Why:** Around **four** on the crude measure this lesson uses. The number matters less than the direction: the claim is that the increase is deliberate and productive. Push it far enough and the reader stops rather than sees, which is the failure mode of obstruction for its own sake. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/literature-i/literariness/shklovskys-test-is-whether-a-readers-perception-is-slowed-if-a ### 9. The Formalists explained a device by relating it to other literary works rather than to the author's life. **Answer:** True **Why:** **True.** Devices are explained by the literary series, by the norms of other works, and by the way a new work deviates from them. This is also why Tynyanov could argue that literary evolution is real: what estranges depends on what has become automatic, so the same device changes value over time. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/literature-i/literariness/the-formalists-explained-a-device-by-relating-it-to-other-literary