The Concept of the Inner Form in Literature

• In Event: Philosophy and Literature: Mutual Distinctiveness and Reciprocal Bond

Abstract

In his 1946 paper “On the question of the inner form of Dostoevsky’s novel”, the philosopher and philologist P. Bizzilli proposes a concept of the inner form of literary work that suggests that all the creative products of a true master constitute a whole organism which encompasses all its individual constituents given in their evolution. This concept mirrors a more well-known concept of the inner form of the word and/or language that has been at the center of Russian philosophical discussions since the beginning of the twentieth century, from G. Shpet and A. Losev to V. Bibikhin. This presentation explores the potential of the concept of the literary inner form in this understanding of the whole creative work of an author in the artistic worldview of Russian classics, including Dostoevsky and Chekhov.

Author

• Olga Lyanda-Geller, Purdue U