The Structure of Perception in the Poetry of William Carlos Williams

Perception played a key role in the aesthetics of William Carlos Williams. But, of course, the idea that art ought to concentrate on the authentic rendering of the object in all its immediacy and particularity goes well beyond Williams and, indeed, well beyond poetry as an art form. The authentic rendering of the perceived object is one of the wellsprings of art, and has played a central role in many critical theories. Let me take one instructive example, among many: Victor Shklovsky, the great Russian Formalist critic and writer, added to the importance of the perceived object in art his notion of ostranenie (defamiliarization, making strange), and concluded that

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• Russian formalist criticism

  Lee T Lemon, Marion J Reis•Russian formalist criticism•1965

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