Formalisztika

Formalisztika is a term used in Hungarian literary theory to describe a school of thought that treats the form of a work as the primary source of its meaning. It focuses on intrinsic features such as structure, style, devices, rhyme and meter, narrative technique, point of view, and genre conventions, rather than on author biography, historical context, or social function.

Its roots lie in early 20th-century Russian Formalism, with figures such as Viktor Šklovszkij and Roman Jakobson, and it also has Czech and later Anglo-American counterparts. The central claim is that the literariness of a text—the way it makes language use itself noticeable—arises from the deployment of form and device rather than from subject matter alone. A key concept is defamiliarization (ostranenie), the idea that artistic technique makes familiar things seem new, prompting renewed perception. Another hallmark is close reading, a careful analysis of form, rhythm, imagery, and narrative organization to reveal how meaning is produced.

Over time, formalist approaches influenced later schools such as the New Criticism in the English-speaking world and various structuralist and semiotic methods, while drawing criticism for downplaying historical and social dimensions of literature. In contemporary Hungarian scholarship, formalisztika often denotes a family of approaches that foreground literary form, incorporating developments in stylistics, narratology, and media analysis, while recognizing the historical origins of the formalist debate.