Sunday, March 13, 2011

Formalism

ON A PENCIL (Essay)
By: Lydia V. Arguilla

ANALYSIS

Thanks for the question. Since it is not my job to do your homework for you, I will answer your question by describing what formalist criticism is, so you can think about it and find examples of it in Hamlet yourself.

Formalist criticism:  An approach to literature that focuses on the formal elements of a work, such as its language, structure, and tone. Formalist critics offer intense examinations of the relationship between form and meaning in a work, emphasizing the subtle complexity in how a work is arranged. Formalists pay special attention to diction, irony, paradox, metaphor, and symbol, as well as larger elements such as plot, characterization, and narrative technique. Formalist critics read literature as an independent work of art rather than as a reflection of the author's state of mind or as a representation of a moment in history. Therefore, anything outside of the work, including historical influences and authorial intent, is generally not examined by formalist critics.

That should be all you need to start looking for examples in your Hamlet text. Start by looking for ironies, paradoxes and metaphors; they should be easy to find. In order to learn something, you are required to put in the work yourself rather than dig up complete answers elsewhere. If you are not sure which examples to choose, just pick some that you think might be fitting. As a student, you don't need perfect answers; you are engaging in exercises meant to educate you, and this is a gradual process.
As a supplement to this, I ask my students to keep a journal which I collect at the end of every week and try to read and scribble feedback in over the weekend. Problems relating to grammar invariably present themselves on these occasions, and if the errors prove system­ic¾which is to say, enough students share them—I sometimes decide to devote a few minutes in the subsequent meetings to a quick review of these problem areas. (Offhand, they never fail to include varying combinations of the following grammatical topics: Subject-Verb Agree­ment, Tense, Pronouns, Prepositions and Idioms). My idea is that by asking students to write more or less constantly and with a generous amount of friendly supervision, these problems will resolve themselves somewhat. After all, the acquisition of language is necessarily a solitary thing—and as in any other skill, there is no substitute for hard and painstaking work, for practice.

4 comments:

  1. this is not what Im looking for! im looking for the full or summary of an essay "On A Pencil"

    ReplyDelete
  2. this is not what Im looking for! im looking for the full or summary of an essay "On A Pencil"

    ReplyDelete
  3. not helpful at all, I want the full summary

    ReplyDelete