Formalism Essay

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Formalism is a school of literary criticism which places emphasis on the style, arrangement and artistic nature of a piece of work. Formalism was developed by Cleanth Brooks and his friends in Vanderbilt University during the 1920’s mainly as a reaction to literary criticism which included extrinsic factors. In formalism the text is perceived as “Art” and the autonomy of the text is advocated. Formalists focus on the intrinsic nature of the text excluding external factors such as, the author, the reader, historical context as well as cultural context of the piece of work. Formalists believe that every aspect of the text is integral and that the text possess all the meaning necessary for interpretation. Formalism analyses, interprets and evaluates the internal features of the text inclusive of grammar, syntax and literary devices. The formalist considers that tensions are vital to the text and are created through Irony, paradox and ambiguity. One of the major concerns of formalism is unity in literature; the coming together of various parts of the text to build up a whole. For the formalist, in a successful text, format and content cannot be separated because form also has meaning. In Formalism, the text is analysed based on the relationship between the form of the text and the content of the text. The poem “Bermudas” is a narrative poem written from the point of view of an all knowing narrator who is an objective persona and describes the setting of the poem in his four line introduction. Although the narrator’s voice is heard in the poem’s introduction his voice is not heard again until the conclusion of the poem. Instead it is the voices of people singing praise on a boat that are heard for the majority of the poem. “Bermudas” consist of octosyllabic lines organized in iambic tetrameter couplets, and has the rhyme scheme, AA, BB, CC....
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