ABSTRACT
Although the roots of Russian Formalism go back to the 1880s, it existed as an identifiable critical movement only during the years immediately preceding the October Revolution of 1917 and in the decade or so succeeding it.1 Yet the term ‘movement’ is misleading. For the Formalists could not be described as members of a unified school of critical thought working, from an organizational basis, toward the realization of an agreed programme or manifesto. Indeed, even the name ‘Formalism’ was not of their choosing but was a pejorative label applied to them by their opponents in the turbulent critical arena of postrevolutionary Russia.2
