How to Use Formalist Tools to Analyze Literature

Step 1: Read more than once, and pay close attention to your reactions as you read.

• Where were you the most engaged while reading?
  
• What confused you? These passages are often the most important.
  
• If you were bored, where and why? Boredom is important.
  

Step 2: Pay close attention to the page (or pages) in front of you.

• What parts of the story or poem (situations, language, characters) seem most significant?
  
• What formal structures encourage you to view them that way?
  
• What major transitions do you notice? (Such as those described by Gerber.)
  
• Do certain situations, motifs, or symbols recur? (Such as the scaffold in the Scarlet Letter)
  
• What parallels can you discover?
  
• What contrasts do you notice?
  

Step 3 (Optional): Consider how your reactions, noted in step 1, might be related to the structures you spotted in step 2.

• Sometimes your reactions and the form won't be related, but when they are, it gives you a powerful insight into how the poem, story, or novel works.
  
• If you discuss the effect a textual structure has on readers, it's generally best to use phrases like "Dimmesdale's sudden revelation encourages readers to reevaluate his moral stature," rather than phrases like "Dimmesdale's sudden revelation makes readers reevaluate his moral stature." Different readers, after all, may react differently.
  

Step 4: Try to identify large patterns.

• If you were mapping the novel, story, or poem, what would be the major landmarks? What forces shape and change the landscape?
  
• Or, if it were a symphony, what would the major movements be? Where are the solos? What are the most important moments?

Step 5: Relate forms to themes.

• What themes are highlighted by patterns and forms you've identified? How do the forms and the themes reinforce one another?
  

Step 6: Start Writing!

• Assume that your audience has read the story, novel, or poem you're discussing, but hasn't noticed the things you have. Point them out for us. Let us see the big picture--what the overarching form is and how it is related to the themes the literature explores.
  

300.97 Fall, Hedges