形式主义与马克思主义.pdf

Formalism and Marxism
Russian Formalism and Marxist criticism had a seismic impact on
twentieth-century literary theory and the shockwaves are still felt
today. First published in 1979, Tony Bennett’s Formalism and
Marxism created its own reverberations by offering a ground-
breaking new interpretation of the Formalists’ achievements and
demanding a new way forward in Marxist criticism.
The author first introduces and reviews the work of the Russian
Formalists, a group of theorists who made an extraordinarily vital
contribution to literary criticism in the decade following the
October Revolution of 1917. Placing the work of key figures in
context and addressing such issues as aesthetics, linguistics and the
category of literature, literary form and function and literary
evolution, Bennett argues that the Formalists’ concerns provided
the basis for a radically historical approach to the study of
literature. Bennett then turns to the situation of Marxist criticism
and sketches the risks it has run in becoming overly entangled with
the concerns of traditional aesthetics. He forcefully argues that
through a serious and sympathetic reassessment of the Formalists
and their historical approach, Marxist critics might find their way
back on to the terrain of politics, where they and their work
belong.
Addressing such crucial questions as ‘What is literature?’ or
‘How should it be studied and to what end?’, Formalism and
Marxism explores ideas which should be considered by any
student or reader of literature and provides a particular challenge
to those interested in Marxist criticism. Now with a new
afterword, this classic text still offers the best available starting
point for those new to the field, as well as representing a crucial
intervention in twentieth-century literary theory.
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Tony Bennett is Professor of Sociology at the Open University,
UK. He is the author of Culture: A Reformer’s Science (1998) and
Outside Litera