"Defamiliarization" is the core concept of Russian formalist literary theory and the issue that formalists are most concerned about. It was proposed by the Russian formalist critic Shklovsky. The so-called "defamiliarization" refers to habituation, mechanization, automation and subconsciousness. It refers to expressing things that are commonplace but invisible in daily life in an unusual way, sometimes contrary to common sense, common sense, and common sense. Common things, but make readers feel unique, novel and surprising. Commonplace things are easy to discover but difficult to express new ideas, while familiar things are difficult to discover and difficult to express. Then, when students introduce the "defamiliarization" technique in their writing, they can often make the article achieve the effect of finding surprises in the ordinary and outstanding in the ordinary. In Chinese teaching, "defamiliarization" is widely used, especially in improving students' writing skills, such as language thinking, writing skills, article structure, material selection, theme expression, etc. Some "defamiliarization" examples in Chinese textbooks also provide good hints and references for students to improve their writing skills.
1. Language defamiliarization
Someone once vividly compared language to the "magic water" of writing. French literary critic Boileau said: "The reason why a beautiful sentence is beautiful is that what it says is something that everyone has thought of, and the way it is said is vivid, exquisite and novel." Look at a student How good a person's language skills are depends on how well he expresses himself in writing. The language of many students is dull, boring, and lacks expressiveness. It is likely that the language expression is not vivid and novel enough, or it is misleading. In this case, you might as well learn from the language "defamiliarization" expression technique in the textbook. For example, the American writer Thoreau wrote after seeing Walden Pond:
This is not my dream/used to decorate a line of poetry/I cannot be closer to God and heaven/based on my life in Walden/I am Its pebbled shores/whispered by the wind/hold in my palm/are its water, its sand/and its deepest recesses/lie high in my thoughts.
——Thoreau's "A Drop of God"
The author has no hypocrisy about the pure beauty of Walden Pond, and integrates its natural clear beauty with the author's soul to express It reflects the author's infinite admiration for Walden Pond. Another example is writing "rain" in the peripheral vision:
"It's raining." The gentle gray beauty came, and her icy delicate hands were playing with countless black and gray keys on the roof, playing the noon all at once. It became dusk.
——Yu Guangzhong's "Listen to the Cold Rain"
The author uses personification and metaphor to write "it's raining" as "gray beauty", which is vivid and beautiful; And the sound of "rain hitting tiles" is compared to the beautiful sound of piano keys, which is very interesting. The defamiliarization of language can also use abnormal combinations of words to create a fresh and wonderful feeling. For example, Shu Ting's "Motherland, My Dear Motherland": "I am the dilapidated old waterwheel by your river/spinning tired songs for thousands of years." Another example is the title of the excellent essay on the Chongqing Examination Paper of the 2004 College Entrance Examination - "I It’s a “mouse” that wants to die.
2. Skills of defamiliarization
Some rhetorical techniques are commonly used in ancient poetry, such as exaggeration, metaphor, synesthesia (transception), transference (transposition), transformation and super-sensory description. etc., to achieve the effect of "defamiliarization". Song Qi, a poet of the Song Dynasty, has a famous line in "Yulou Chun" about "The red apricot branches are noisy in spring". The modern scholar Wang Guowei commented in "Renjian Cihua": "With the word 'noise', the whole realm comes out." The sentence is full of richness. Expression mostly involves the use of certain techniques. In students' writing, language should be outstanding, which can also be achieved through defamiliarization of skills. Such as:
Eagles strike in the sky, fish fly in the shallows, and all kinds of frosty sky compete for freedom.
——Mao Zedong's "Qinyuanchun? Changsha"
The word "xiang" uses the rhetoric of transference. "Xiang" originally described the flying movements of birds and animals in the air, but is now used to describe the posture of fish, vividly depicting the free and brisk demeanor of fish swimming in the water. If the word "游" is used, it is lifeless, too dull, and not enough to express the author's yearning.
(Wu Gorge) Suddenly, the dark gray rocks dropped straight down from the sky and dipped into the middle of the river, which reminded people of a huge exclamation point; suddenly, there were green grassy slopes, like a piece of music full of emotion.
——Liu Baiyu's "Three Gorges of the Yangtze River"
The two "sudden moments" describe the characteristics of poetry with endless changes, but also full of interest. The previous sentence is a metaphor. The steepness of Wu Gorge is like an "exclamation point", going vertically downward. The last sentence is synaesthesia. The beautiful scenery seen by the author during his trip to Wu Gorge is transformed into hearing, which is a "soulful music".
With all the troubles in the world filling my mind, how can these big and small cars be able to carry them?
——Wang Shifu's "Farewell at the Long Pavilion"
The author turns the imaginary into reality, The invisible and intangible emotions are embodied in an exaggerated way, making the big and small cars full of sadness, so that "sorrow" is both weighty and "tangible"; it vividly expresses the depth of the protagonist's pain. This sentence cleverly uses the poem "Wulingchun" by Li Qingzhao, "I am afraid that a boat on two streams cannot carry many sorrows."
3. Structure defamiliarization
The so-called structure is the expression form of the article, that is, the layout of the article. Traditionally, articles always organize content according to a certain structure, or the development process of things, or the internal laws of the structure of things, or the internal logical connections of things. This kind of structure is advanced layer by layer, and the ideas are clearer. But something "abnormal" in the structure will produce a defamiliarizing effect.
The sixth unit of "Appreciation of Foreign Novels" is teaching on the topic of "Structure". Structure is a "container". It is not disordered, but has a main thread running through it, which connects the main vein of the article. For example, the things written in "Half a Sheet of Paper" by Swedish writer Strindberg are so complicated that they can be written into a full-length novel. But the author chose a small piece of paper to record phone calls as a "container" to solidify all the things in life in the form of phone numbers. Although they appear to be just numbers, simple and uncomplicated, the joys and sorrows of life's changes are linked together by them. There is a story and a mood behind each number, but it is limited by this "container" and will never overflow.
In order to maintain a linear structure, the Italian writer Calvino's "Livestock Grove" deliberately "delayed" the progress of the novel: whenever Jua raised his shotgun to shoot at the German soldiers, he would be stopped. And the reason for stopping it is reasonable. Some articles don't even have a "container", but they bind the materials together. For example, British writer Woolf's stream-of-consciousness novel "The Spot on the Wall" does not have events called "story" and "plot" in the traditional sense. It relies entirely on a "spot" on the wall to show the character's inner consciousness.
4. Defamiliarization of the subject matter
The subject matter is the "flesh and blood" of the article. The subject matter is extracted, processed or transformed from the material into the work. Faced with the same material, people will have different emotional attitudes, which will give different meanings to the subject matter entering the work, which also shows the beauty of artistic defamiliarization. For example, He Zhizhang wrote "Liu", "The jasper made up a tree as high as a tree, with thousands of green silk ribbons hanging down." And Zeng Gong wrote "Liu", "The chaotic strips have not turned into the first yellow, and they are crazy when relying on the east wind." It is written about "Willows in Early Spring". The former uses metaphorical techniques, such as the appearance of a beautiful woman, graceful and graceful, singing willows and singing spring, which is full of interest; . The subject matter becomes unfamiliar, either written according to its meaning, or written against its meaning, or written with its meaning in mind, or written in vain.
Another example is the "Book of Sand" by the Argentinian writer Borges, which is a fictional "Book of Sand" - like sand, it has no beginning and no end; there is no homepage and no end. Page. Is there such a book? The text at the beginning of the article "A line is composed of a series of points; countless lines make up a surface... Nowadays, when people tell fictional stories, they always declare that it is absolutely true; but my story is a little "It's true" makes you feel real when you read it. As long as you continue reading, we will know that the writer is making up the story. First, a stranger is selling the "Bible", and then it is hinted that the book comes from Bombay and its characteristics. , "I" managed to get this book again, but later this book troubled "me" so much that "I" hid the book in the library. The truth of art is certainly related to the truth of life, but the truth of art is by no means equal to the truth of life. We might as well use some "fabrication" in our writing to make the facts that we have turned a blind eye to become unfamiliar and feel fresh and wonderful. Sometimes the writing requirements for essay propositions also allow "fabrication", which also implies that candidates can use defamiliarizing writing about the life or things around them to broaden another way of writing.
5. Defamiliarizing the theme
The theme is the central idea or main idea, which is the soul of the article. The theme is processed and refined from the subject matter, language, scene, characters, plot, details, etc. It runs through the entire text of the work and reflects the author's writing purpose and emotional attitude. The theme can be divided into explicit and implicit, which is an ambiguous concept. Some works are often hinted through objective description, exaggeration, metaphor, symbol, etc., and the theme seems vague, making readers always feel "strange".
The theme of British writer Woolf's stream-of-consciousness novel "The Spot on the Wall" is elusive. The novel narrates in the first person the story of "I" seeing the spots on the wall and my thoughts. It is unlike traditional novels. The characters, plot, environment, and even the gender of "my" are vague, so its theme seems ambiguous and unfamiliar. Through the conjecture and thinking about the spots on the wall, the theme of the novel can be understood as: extending the tentacles of the spirit to all aspects of nature and society, including questions about the contingency of life and the inevitability of fate, and the eternal continuation of life after the death of an individual. They have had significant experience and understanding of the problems, the opposition between nature and mechanical reality, the conflict between the innovative spirit of literature and outdated norms, and the resistance of women to male concepts.
However, "defamiliarization" does not just pursue novelty and surprise, making people confused. It just breaks the rules and uses appropriate techniques to create a sense of freshness. Therefore, whether it is in terms of language, technique, structure, or in terms of subject matter and themes, the use of "defamiliarization" requires moderate use so that writing can appear more real.
[Author’s contact: Hongzhong Middle School, Jiaojiang District, Taizhou City, Zhejiang]