Viktor Shklovsky

Viktor Shklovsky's 1925 book Theory of Prose might have become the most important work of literary criticism in the twentieth century had not two obstacles barred its way: the crackdown by Soviet dictatorship on Shklovsky and other Russian Formalists in the 1930s, and the unavailability of an English translation. Now translated in its entirety for the first time, Theory of Prose not only anticipates structuralism and post-structuralism, but poses questions about the nature of fiction that are as provocative today as they were in the 1920s. Arguing that writers structure their materials according to artistic principles rather than from attempts to imitate "reality," Shklovsky uses Cervantes, Tolstoi, Sterne, Dickens, Bely, and Rozanov to give us a new way of thinking about fiction and, in his most impassioned moments, about the world. Benjamin Sher's lucid translation will allow Shklovsky's Theory of Prose to fulfill its destiny as a major theoretical work of the twentieth century.

Theory of Prose

By Viktor Shklovsky ; Translation By Richard Sheldon (Dalkey Archive Scholarly Series)

Knight's Move

Art as Technique

While living in exile in Berlin, the formidable literary critic Viktor Shklovsky fell in love with Elsa Triolet. He fell into the habit of sending Elsa several letters a day, a situation she accepted under one condition: he was forbidden to write about love. Zoo, or Letters Not about Love is an epistolary novel born of this constraint, and although the brilliant and playful letters contained here cover everything from observations about contemporary German and Russian life to theories of art and literature, nonetheless every one of them is indirectly dedicated to the one topic they are all required to avoid: their author's own unrequited love.

Zoo, Or, Letters Not about Love

Lyn Hejinian

New Preface by Lyn Hejinian, Introduction and,Translation by Richard Sheldon,In part a memoir of the three 'Factories' that,influenced Shklovsky's development as a human,being and as a writer, the events dipicted within,this book are fictionalised and conveyed with the,poetic verve and playfulness of form that have,made Shklovsky a major figure in 20th-century,world literature. First published in a limited,edition in 1977 and now available in paperback,for the first time, THIRD FACTORY is written with,an unerring artist's confidence.

Third Factory

Dalkey Archive Press’s favorite writer of them all. “Myths do not flow through the pipes of history,” writes Viktor Shklovsky, “they change and splinter, they contrast and refute one another. The similar turns out to be dissimilar.” Published in Moscow in 1970 and appearing in English translation for the first time, Bowstring is a seminal work, in which Shklovsky redefines estrangement (ostranenie) as a device of the literary comparatist—the “person out of place,” who has turned up in a period where he does not belong and who must search for meaning with a strained sensibility. As Shklovsky experiments with different genres, employing a technique of textual montage, he mixes autobiography, biography, memoir, history, and literary criticism in a book that boldly refutes mechanical repetition, mediocrity, and cultural parochialism in the name of art that dares to be different and innovative. Bowstring is a brilliant and provocative book that spares no one in its unapologetic project to free art from conventionality.

On the Dissimilarity of the Similar

Bowstring

witness to an era

Shklovsky

Vladimir Vladimirovič Maâkovskij

Boris Mihajlovič Èjhenbaum

Lev Petrovich Yakubinsky

Iouri Nikolaevitch Tynianov

Boris Vassilievitch Kazansky

Boris Viktorovich Tomashevsky

Aleksej Eliseevič Kručenyh

The publication Coiled Verbal Spring : Devices of Lenin's Language brings together the first English translation of the Russian Formalist and Futurist writings on Lenin's revolutionary language. The book includes the Russian Formalists' (Viktor Shklovsky, Boris Eikhenbaum, Yuri Tynyanov, Boris Tomashevsky, Lev Yakubinsky, and Boris Kazansky) most 'political' texts, first published in 1924 in the journal of the Left Front of the Arts (edited by Mayakovsky). Together with this collection, the publication also includes Futurist poet Alexei Kruchenykh's Devices of Lenin's Speech, from 1925. Indispensable for any serious research dealing with the relationship between revolutionary politics and artistic forms, these writings had remained a marginal note, both in studies on avant-garde art, and in much literature on Formalist theory. The publication is edited by Sezgin Boynik, who wrote an extensive introduction to the translations by contextualising the experiments of the Russian avant-garde through theories of conjuncture, or more precisely, the theory of contemporaneity within the revolutionary moment. Darko Suvin in his afterword discusses the actuality (and limits) of Lenin and Formalists in the shadow of never-ending warfare.

Devices of Lenin's Language

Coiled Verbal Spring

Роман

Сентиментальное путешествие

Marco Polo

Zoo o lettere non d'amore

A collection of Shklovsky's key criticism, taken from the major theoretical writings as well as from letters and memoirs, and presented in new translations with introductory material and commentary.

A Reader

Guerra e pace di Tolstoj

A Sentimental Journey; Memoirs, 1917-1922

1910’lu yıllarda Rus Fütürizminin iki önemli ismi olan Hlebnikov ve Mayakovski ile yakın arkadaş olan Şklovski, daha öğrenciliği sırasında Fütürizmin kuramcısı olmuştur. İlerleyen yıllarda Rus Biçimcilerinin en önemli isimlerinden biri haline gelen edebiyat kuramcısı Viktor Şklovski, edebi metinleri bir yapı olarak ele almış ve onların yazılması sürecini bir yöntem tekniği olarak tanımlamıştır. “Don Kişot Nasıl Yapıldı” adlı metin Viktor Şklovski’nin bu yöntem tekniğini açıkladığı en önemli iki çalışmasından biridir. Burada yazar kendi düzyazı kuramını örneklendirir. Şklovski’nin roman kuramının iki anahtar kavramı çerçeveleme (obramleniye) ve zincirlemedir (nanizıvaniye). Yazar kitabında bu teknikleri ayrıntılarıyla açıklamaktadır.

Modern Kurgu Tekniğinin İcadı

Don Kişot Nasıl Yapıldı

Richard Robert Sheldon

In this essay, a leading figure of the Russian Formalist movement of the 1910s and 1920s enunciates the function of the arts: what they are and, more importantly, what they are not. His views of the other arts lead him into speculations about cinematography, which was just emerging at the time of writing, 1923.

Literature and Cinematography

Shushan Avagyan

"Perhaps because he is such an unlikely Tolstoyan, Viktor Shklovsky's writing on Tolstoy is always absorbing and often brilliant." Russian Review

A Book on Plot

Energy of Delusion

Or, Letters Not about Love

Life of a Bishop's Assistant is a "rewritten" biography of the 18th century historical figure, Gavriil Dobrinin. The son of a priest, he became an assistant to a bishop before being fortunate to rise all the way to gubernia procurator. Despite the obscurity of Dobrinin, it is Shklovsky's narration of his story that takes center stage. Like Zoo, or Letters Not About Love, Life of a Bishop's Assistant is a notable example of experimentation with narrative form in the early twentieth century by one of its leading theorists.

Viktor Shklovsky

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