Formalists

Formalists are scholars and critics who argue that the defining features of a work lie in its form—its structure, technique, and material properties—rather than in subject matter, historical context, or author intention. The label is most closely associated with the early 20th-century Russian Formalist movement, which sought to study poetics by focusing on devices that create literariness, such as defamiliarization (ostranenie), narrative technique, and the disruption of ordinary language. Key figures include Viktor Shklovsky, Roman Jakobson, Boris Eikhenbaum, Yury Tynyanov, and Dmitry Tomashevsky. The Formalists maintained that the function of literature is realized through artistic devices themselves, which transform everyday speech into art.

In other domains, formalism appears as a general emphasis on form over content. In art criticism and aesthetics, formalists evaluate artworks primarily on visual elements like line, color, and composition, often reserving less weight for social or political context. In American criticism, Clement Greenberg is cited as a leading proponent of formalist analysis of modernist painting and sculpture, arguing that the integrity of form defines artistic value.

In film theory, formalist approaches highlight montage, rhythm, editing, and visual composition as primary sources of meaning, contrasting with realist or sociocultural readings that foreground context or narrative.

Critiques of formalism argue that form cannot be fully separated from content and context, and many later approaches—New Criticism, structuralism, post-structuralism, and cultural studies—seek broader interpretive frameworks. Nevertheless, formalist methods continue to influence close reading, art criticism, and film studies by foregrounding how form contributes to meaning.