Formal analysis and the Psalms

Abstract

"Along with an increased interest in literary criticism have come new tech- niques for analyzing poetic works. One of these is formal analysis as practiced by the Chicago Critics.' Formal analysis looks beyond metrics, prosodic molds, such as odes and sonnets, or conventions like Hebrew parallelisms, or any of the other interesting but external features of poetry, to a system of internal relationships. These relationships do not resemble the mechanical and impersonal ones Vern S. Poythress describes in his summary of structuralist approaches.' And despite some verbal similarity, formal analysis is not Hermann Gunkel's form criticism. Neither is it the cult-functional approach of Sigmund Mowinckel nor the time- historical one of Moses Buttenwieser. Instead it is a technique for approaching poems as unique artistic wholes to discover a system of inner relationships in which form and content are inseparable. These relationships, which I shall call the total intrinsic form, are best grasped by concrete illustrations."