Practice question · True or false
The Formalists explained a device by relating it to other literary works rather than to the author's life.
Hints
- Their programme defined itself against biographical criticism.
- Tynyanov's "literary series" is the frame they used.
Show the 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.
Practise Literariness
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