The rejection of aesthetics in Boris Eikhenbaum’s formalist theory

Abstract

In taking as its starting point the rejection of the aesthetics in Boris Eikhenbaum’s text “The theory of the ‘Formal Method’” (1925), the paper discusses and exemplifies the process and the political motivation of this denial. The great importance of the aesthetics, above all in its German version, in Eikhenbaum’s previous reflection, especially related to his reception of Friedrich Schiller’s theory of tragic and sublime in 1917, calls indeed one’s attention. After this positive reception, we can observe, though, a quick rising of the increasingly negative interpretation, ended by the radical refutation of the aesthetics in the 1920s.