Popular Culture Review Vol. 2, No. 2, July 1991 | Page 9

A Peculiar Method of Literary Transformation: "Defamiliarization” in the Cowboy-Novel Serial Literary works turn the "old” into the "new" by offering a fresh look at the available range of life experiences, or the available range of literature dealing with those life experiences, fantasy literature not excluded. Early in the present century a group of Russian writers and artists became interested in the possibilities of renovating that which was overly familiar, in life and art, so as to greatly enhance literature's overall effect on the reader. These Russian Formalists, as they came to be called, developed the idea of "defamiliarization" (ostranenie)—breaking up the predictable format of plot, syntax, or whatever, to bring about this renovation. This paper deals with an American cowboy-western novel published in 1976, which is an excellent example of this "defamiliarization" process in the production of literary works. It is a well-known fact that many literary works change the "old" into the "new," offering the reader the equivalent of seasoned wine in fresh bottles. Among the specific illustrative examples are Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Shakespeare's plays; among the particular types are recycled myths, legends, and folktales ... burlesques, satires, and travesties. Literature in fac t is grounded in transformation-transformation of that which is predicated on mimesis: imitation of life or of some vision produced by the human imagination. Eventually the transformation that is the literary rendering of a picture of life or an image in the imagination may itself become transformed. How? By the author's "defamiliarization" (in a sense) the very language, or more generally, the way of presenting the rendition, so that the reader (observer), by "taking in" the new mode of presentation, can get much of the benefit of "the same old stuff" without having to deal with its aspect of staleness. About seventy years ago a loosely affiliated group of writers, thinkers, and artists-including Roman Jakobson, Viktor Shklovsky, and Vladimir Propp—evinced particular interest in this general