On the Defamiliarization in The Period

On the Defamiliarization in The Period

On the Defamiliarization in The Period
of A Tale of Two Cities
Yang Chao

Abstract
Charles Dickens, a canonical author of the Victorian Age, is unique in his style and language, which primarily derives from his successful use of deviant devices as his language strategy. The present essay attempts a case study of the first chapter of A Tale of Two Cities-- The Period, in order to cast some light on the defamiliarization put forward by the Russian Formalists. The deviant languages in it are discussed and sorted as uneconomical, implicit, and parallel.      


Introduction
Defamiliarization is brought forward by the early twentieth century Russian formalist Viktor Shklovsky. Defamiliarization is a process of defamiliarizing the habitual laws of conception supported by the daily feelings towards the world and the abstract way of perceiving the world. Such abstraction and habituation make the lively world dead and invisible. The defamiliarizing procedure is to focus and prolong people’s attention on, and refresh their awareness of the materials consisting of the world. Within the literary matrix, deviant words and language in literary works aim at defamiliarizing the language medium and refresh people’s awareness of the medium itself. Through defamiliarization, a sense of novelty is produced.

Novelty and shock are as a matter of fact the aesthetic standards set up by the Russian formalists. Nevertheless, the concept novelty is not originally developed by the formalists. It has been long time ago popular. “Novelty” is a significant poetic tradition first studied by Aristotle and then developed by Mazzone, Hegel, and some Romantic poets. “Novelty” shares a large number of similarities with defamiliarization and can be seen an aspiration and theoretical basis of it.

In “Art as Technique”, Shklovsky states:
Art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stony. The purpose of art is...