Viktor Shklovsky: A Reader

by Viktor Shklovsky, Alexandra Berlina (Editor)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501310362
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	12/01/2016
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.94(d)

About the Author

Viktor Shklovsky (1893-1984) was one of the foremost literary critics and theorists of the 20th century. One of the founders of the Formalist movement in literary criticism, his seminal works include "Art as Method" (1917), Theory of Prose (1925), Third Factory (1926), classic studies of Tolstoy and Mayakovsky, and a memoir of the Russian civil-war era, A Sentimental Journey: Memoirs, 1917-1922 (1923).

Alexandra Berlina is Postdoctoral Researcher in Literary Studies at the University of Erfurt, Germany. Her translations of Brodsky's poems "Dido and Aeneas" and "You can't tell a gnat..." have won awards from the 'Willis Barnstone Translation Prize' and the 'The Joseph Brodsky/Stephen Spender Prize'. She is the author of Brodsky Translating Brodsky (Bloomsbury, 2014).

Table of Contents

Translator's Introduction
Viktor Shklovsky: Life and Work
Ostranenie and Other Key Concepts
Shklovsky in the West: Reception and Heritage
The Poker of Russian Formalism: Shklovsky as Protagonist
In Fiction
In Diaries and Memoirs
Shklovsky's Shorts
Shklovsky's Style
Selection, Translation and Formal Remarks

Section I: OPOYAZ Publications
Translator's Introduction

Resurrection of the Word (1914)
Art as Device (1917/1919)
Literature beyond “Plot” (1921/1925)
Literature beyond Theme; Non-Linear Inheritance
Literature beyond Genre; Digressions
Literature beyond Categories; Seeing like a Child

Section II: Autobiographic Hybrids
Translator's Introduction

A Letter to Roman Jakobson (1922/1990)
Zoo, or Letters Not About Love (1923/1965)
Author's Preface to the First Edition
A Second Preface for an Old Book
A Third Preface
Letter Four
Letter Six
Letter Eight
Letter Eleven
Letter Seventeen
Letter Twenty Two
Letter Twenty Eight
Letter Thirty
A Sentimental Jourbaney (1923)
Revolution and the Front
The Writing Desk
Knight's Move (1923)
Preface One
Driving Nails with a Samovar
On “The Great Metalworker”
A Thousand Herrings
The Tsar's Kitchen
Teaser Stallions (1924/1990)
The Third Factory (1926)
The First Factory
The Second Factory
The Third Factory

Section III: Early Soviet Criticism and Advice to Young Writers
Translator's Introduction

The Technique of Writing Craft (1927)
Introduction: Don't Hurry to Become a Professional Writer
Newspaper Work
Narrative Prose
Unfolding a Text
A Few Words on Poetry
Conclusion
Hamburg Score (1928)
Babel: A Critical Romance (1924)
In Defense of the Sociological Method (1927)
Ten Years (1927)
Hamburg Score (1928)
The Way I Write (1930/1990)

Section IV: After the Freeze
Translator's Introduction

Once Upon A Time (1964)
Childhood
Youth
The Ending of Youth
Tales about Prose (1966/1983)
A Note From the Author
On the Novella
Some Empirical Remarks on the Methods of Connecting Novellas
On the Different Meanings of “Character” when Applied to Literary Works of Different Epochs
On the True Unity of Works of Art
What Happened after the Plague of 1348?
On the Sense of Wonder
Scenes of Recognition in Dickens
Concept Renewal
Letters to Nikita Shklovsky (1965-1969/2002)
05.10.1965
05.10.1966
19.04.1968
02.04.1969
20.07.1969
Bowstring. On the Dissimilarity of the Similar. (1970)
Energy of Delusion. A Book on Plot. (1981)

Section V: On the Theory of Prose (1983)
Translator's Introduction

Preface
Words Free the Soul from Narrowness: About the OPOYAZ
The Rhyme of Poetry. The Rhyme of Prose. Structuralism through the Looking Glass: A Farewell
The First Unsuccessful Blueprint of a Whale: Chekhov's “Darling”
The Links of Art Do Not Repeat Each Other. Once Again, on the Dissimilarity of the Similar.
Sterne
In the Footsteps of Old Discoveries and Inventions
The Problem of Time in Art
The Lungs Are for Breathing. Thoughts Out Loud.
Yet Another Foreword
Ostranenie
In Reply to a Questionnaire
[More Thoughts Out Loud]

Section VI: In 60 Years: Works on Cinema. (1985)
Translator's Introduction

Introduction (1985)
On Cinema (1919)
The Plot in Cinema (1923)
Chaplin as Policeman (1923)
The Semantics of Cinema (1925)
Poetry and Prose in Cinema (1927)
On Re-Editing Films (1927)
Five Feuilletons on Eisenstein (1926)
Talking to Friends (1939)
Happy Fable-land (1948)
What the Character Knows and What the Audience Knows (1959)
The Emergence of the Word (1963)
Returban the Ball into the Game (1970)
Unread Dream (1984)
Instead of an Afterword: A Letter to Evgeny Gabrilovich (1984)

Editorial Reviews

An extraordinary revelation of the unbelievable life and work of the man who invented formalism. Alexandra Berlina has done a great service to literature by rescuing these fragments of one of the most lively and irreverent minds of the last century. A book to return to, again and again.
David Bellos, Meredith Howland Pyne Professor of French Literature, Princeton University, USA, and author of Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything

This collection allows all readers to approach the life and opinions of Viktor Shklovsky, one of the most fascinating figures of Russian cultural life in the twentieth century.
Tzvetan Todorov, historian, essayist, and author of The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre

Viktor Shklovsky: A Reader, thoughtfully translated and edited by Alexandra Berlina, is a valiant reminder of the extraordinary versatility, humor, brilliance, and sensitivity the Formalist label has come to conceal. ... With this exemplary new anthology, Alexandra Berlina has helped free Shklovsky from the clanging of -isms, allowing new readers to appreciate his thought in the fullness of its diversity and beauty.
The Los Angeles Review of Books

From the Publisher