Beyond language : Viktor Shklovsky, estrangement, and the search for meaning in art

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract
The key concept of Viktor Shklovsky's (1893-1984) understanding of literature is estrangement, a literary device the twofold purpose of which is to make a text strange and to restore one's perception of life. While previous scholarship has focused on the first of these purposes, this dissertation focuses on the second. Shklovsky, far from arguing for a vision of literature in which the meaning of a text is either nonexistent or located strictly in its language or formal features, in fact puts forth a theory of creativity as an existential enterprise, intimately connected with and even inseparable from deep human experiences such as alienation, love, transcendence, and the search for meaning. These experiences may be invoked or self-consciously created by language employed in specific, formally complex ways, but they can never finally be reduced to language. Particular attention is given to the way in which Shklovsky develops these ideas by engaging with the work of Roman Jakobson (1896-1982), Lev Tolstoy (1828-1910), and Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930).

Description

Type of resource text
Form electronic; electronic resource; remote
Extent 1 online resource.
Publication date 2015
Issuance monographic
Language English

Creators/Contributors

Associated with Bartling, Scott
Associated with Stanford University, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures.
Primary advisor Safran, Gabriella, 1967-
Thesis advisor Safran, Gabriella, 1967-
Thesis advisor Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich
Thesis advisor Kunanbaeva, Alma
Advisor Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich
Advisor Kunanbaeva, Alma

Subjects

Genre Theses

Bibliographic information

Statement of responsibility Scott Bartling.
Note Submitted to the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures.
Thesis Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2015.
Location electronic resource

Access conditions

Copyright
© 2015 by Scott William Rowan Bartling
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).

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