The formalist method of literary criticism is primarily focused on the text itself, rather than external topics such as history and background, the author's biographical information, or the social contexts which surround a piece of work. In the formalist perspective, we ask ourselves, why did the author choose to write his or her work in this specific style? Why did he or she choose to include certain literary elements? "What matters most to the formalist critic is how the work comes to mean what it does--how its resources of language are deployed by the writer to convey meaning" (DiYanni…
