Formalist Literary Criticism Russian Formalism is driven by an interest in renewing or revitalizing the emotional experience of art through experiments with form. Art is not a way of thinking, but rather a way of feeling. The aesthetic shortcuts employed by artists may more effectively communicate a thought, but they also corrupt and ultimately destroy the artistic experience. Critics like Victor Shlovsky want to renew the public's awareness of the ordinary, to make it extraordinary. "The purpose of art is to convey the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known... Art is a way of experiencing the craftiness of an object; the object is not important" (741). As old forms have become stagnant, artists must strive to invent new strategies to slow the reader down, disorientate them, or defamiliarize them. At all costs, art must prevent audiences from being able to make sense of the entire aesthetic experience from a small selection of details. The formalists place on the shoulders of the artist the ethical duty to innovate and roughen poetic language. It is the journey through the text, without arriving at its final destination, that makes literature valuable and important. Works Cited Shlovsky, Victor. "Art as technique" The critical tradition. Ed., David H. Richter, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989.