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| | Formalist Literary Theory and Methodology |
 | | "Form" in the history of aesthetic theory is often associated with "organic form," as in the recognizable form of a rose, a cliff, a star, or some other natural being. |
| | By de-constructing the text (kind of like running a film backwards), the analyst shows that a text’s surface masks internal contradictions that cannot be resolved. |
| | Formalist literary theory thus tends toward a methodology of literary analysis dubbed "close reading." In close reading, the method of the analyst is to begin by describing the form the work takes, and to decide which conventional forms or genres of literary objects it belongs with (tragedy, the sonnet, the detective novel, etc.). |
| www.uwm.edu /~gjay/Litcrit/formal.htm (1319 words) |
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