New Formalism

After being questioned about my own work as formalist, I've been on a reading tear to see the history of the intellectual debate about formalism in English studies. I know it's been out of fashion for some time, and formalism is practically used synonymously with "totalizing." But I wanted to know how and when that attitude about formalism began. What caused the shift away from formalism in literary studies? Is formalism really "dead," or is there a new version of it? And, in fact, am I "doing" a sort of "new formalism" with my work on genre?

When I was in high school, our teachers were trained to analyze literature per the New Critics school--Cleanth Brooks, Robert Penn Warren, etc. I wasn't permitted to hint at an author's intent or make any assumption about anything beyond the text. Pure analysis of the text, itself...or so we were taught, because there is an assumption of "purity" in that sort of work, and it doesn't take long to get to Platonic textual ideals when you follow that line of thinking.

When I was an undergrad the thinking was shifting to theory, but I didn't know it. So, flashing forward about 15 years, graduate school brought a surprise with a host of "isms" I knew little about. I had to reconsider my approach to text, which meant beginning a process of positioning myself, asking myself what "ism" I "belonged" to or fit. It's not something I like doing. It's easier for me to say what "isms" I am not than what ones I possibly am. For now, I'll just stick with saying my fields are American literature and digital humanities and leave the "isms" out of it.

But I still have a nagging feeling about "new formalism," which seems to be a label, after all. I found this article by Marjorie Levinson about it--http://www.sitemaker.umich.edu/pmla_article/home

More on that later.