Comparison of Russian Formalism and Anglo-American New Criticism

Abstract

Russian Formalism and Anglo-American New Criticism are both text-based critical methods, and their critical philosophy of understanding works and their literary significance from the perspective of the text is the same. There are differences between the two in terms of textual views and critical approach. In terms of textual views, Russian Formalism emphasizes that text is a language object that has been defamiliarized. While, New Criticism regards the text as a closed organic whole, an objective existence that is unrelated to the author's intention and the reader's feelings. In terms of critical approach, Formalism reflects a focus on the lower level of literary language, namely the level of form. New Criticism emphasizes the close reading analysis of specific literary works from the upper level of language, namely the semantic level, to analyze the integrated meaning of the organic whole composed of various distant and heterogeneous language elements that are not coordinated.