Understanding Formalist Criticism
“On the contrary, he [the poet] must establish the detail, must abide by the details, and through his realization of the details attain to whatever general meaning he can attain…For here it is the tail that wags the dog.”
-From Cleanth Brooks’s “Irony as a Principle of Structure” in Donald Keesey’s Contexts for Criticism, page 84-85
Brook’s descriptions and explanations in this essay,
especially the one I’ve quoted above, really helped me to better understand how
Formalist criticism should be handled.
One almost has to think backwards when completing a Formalist critique
of a work. I did a mostly
Formalist critique of John Keat’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” for our first casebook
essay, and although I did well, I had a really hard time coming up with an
argument. Now, I know that as I
read I have to look for similar details that will help me to complete this type
of criticism, instead of thinking of an idea and then finding details to back
them up.
Erica, I really liked the quote you picked too. I really agree with what Brooks is saying, so much of the meaning is in the details. If one comes up with the idea first and then just comes up with a bunch of random details, it’s obvious that the details were just created almost to take up space. But when the details are the poet’s first concern this little parts make a more intricate, meaningful whole.