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Alexander Dmitriev: Worse than a Mistake? Epigonism and Routinisation in Russian Formalism
As scholars and as writers, the founding fathers of Russian Formalism were not afraid to err in the conventional sense, but what definitely was amongst their fears were epigonism and imitation as an academic and literary secondary activity. However, the repetition or automation of some characteristic features was obvious in the texts of Shklovsky and in the early prose of Tynianov during the 1920s.
While senior formalists made innovation to be the basis of literary development, their disciples consciously turned to the analysis of routine practices in literature. First for me is Boris Buchstab's reflexive text from the late 1920s (Anti-Eichenbaum. Epigonism Justified). The paper will consider Victor Gofman's legacy, which, building on his research on Ryleyev, covers the concept of Epigonism, and also Peter Bogatyrev’s ideas about the folk usage of cultivated literature’s plots in his work on Pushkin's Hussar of 1923.