One of the great problems in the theory of fiction from Aristotle to Auerbach has been the relationship between fictional art and life: the problem of mimesis. The formalist approach to this problem, far from being a lapse into pure aestheticism, or a denial of the mimetic component in fiction, is an attempt to discover exactly what verbal art does to life and for life. This is most apparent in Victor Shklovsky's concept of defamiliarization. Shklovsky's concept is grounded in a theory of perception that is essentially Gestaltist. (And behind the Gestalt psychologists are the Romantic poets and philosophers. In the English tradition, there are passages in Coleridge's Biographia Literaria and Shelley's Defense of Poetry which clearly anticipate Shklovsky's formulation, as we shall see in chapter 6.A, below.) “As perception becomes habitual," Shklovsky notes, “it becomes automatic." And he adds, “We see the obiect as though it were enveloped in a sack. We know what it is by its configuration, but we see only its silhouette." In considering a passage from Tolstoy's Diary, Shklovsky reaches the following conclusion:
Shklovsky goes on to illustrate the technique of defamiliarization extensively from the works of Tolstoy, showing us how Tolstoy, by using the point of view of a peasant, or even an animal, can make the familiar seem strange, so that we see it again. Defamiliarization is not only a fundamental technique of mimetic art, it is its principal justification as well. In fiction, defamiliarization is achieved through point of view and through style, of course, but it is also accomplished by plotting itself. Plot, by rearranging events of story, defamiliarizes them and opens them to perception. And because art itself exists in time, the specific devices of defamiliari-zation themselves succumb to habit and become conventions which finally obscure the very objects and events they were invented to display. Thus there can be no permanently "realistic" technique. Ultimately, the artist's reaction to the tyranny of fictional conventions of representation is a parodic one. He will, as Shklovsky says, “lay bare" the conventional techniques by exaggerating them. Thus Shklovsky analyses Tristram Shandy as primarily a work of fiction about fictional technique. Because it focuses on the devices of fiction it is also about modes of perception—about the inter-penetration of art and life. The laying bare of literary devices makes them seem strange and unfamiliar, too, so that we are especially aware of them.