ABSTRACT
THIS study addresses itself to three related tasks. First, it sets out to introduce the work of the Russian Formalists, a group of literary theorists who madean extraordinarily vital and influential contribution to literary criticism during the decade or so after the October Revolution of 1917. Second, by arguing for a new interpretation of their work, it suggests that the Formalists should be viewed more seriously and sympathetically by Marxist critics than has hitherto been the case. Finally, as anundercurrent running beneath these concerns, it argues that many of the difficulties in which Marxist criticism currently finds itself can be traced to the fact that it hasnever clearly disentangled its concerns from those of traditional aesthetics. We hope, in part, to remedy this by proposing, on the basis of a critical re-examination of the work of the Formalists, a new set of concerns for Marxist criticism, a new concept of ‘literature’, which will shift it from the terrain of aesthetics to that of politics where it belongs.
