"Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky,"
Soviet Writer and Theorist.
In 1914 assisted in founding OPOYAZ, the Society for the Study of Poetic Language. HIs novels are autobiographical in nature, includeing a memoir of the early Bolshevik years.
Shlovsky was also part of the Serapion Brothers literary circle. He lived in Berlin for a period, and returned to the USSR in 1923, at which time the officials shut down OPOYAZ.
As a memeber of the Serapion Brothers OPOYAZ, Shlovsky felt the the main thrust of literature was not its social impact, but instead its use, and creation of language itself.
His "On The Theory of Prose" postulates that writing is the use of language, style, and devices that cause the reader to view the world in a new light by presenting ideas(old ones) or everyday occurances and experiences in new, and odd ways. This he termed ostranenie, or 'making it strange', and was a major addition to Russian Formalist Theory.
After the Stalinist officials disapproved of Formalism, he switched to film critic, and wrote some studies of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Mayakovsky.
PostPopPulp heartily agrees with Shlovsky's theory of 'making it strange'.
Bibliography for Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky,
Post Pop Pulp Stories by Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky,
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