"One of the most advanced, sophisticated, and consistently self-reflective works in literary (meta)theory to date-in some respects akin to Hayden White's influential Metahistory, written with comparable verve and panache."-Review in World Literature Today "We must be grateful to Peter Steiner for having written such a lucid, critical exposition based on a firsthand knowledge of the texts and the commentary on them."-Rene Wellek, Poetics Today "Peter Steiner conducts a crisp, metapoetical analysis of the diverse phenomenon of Russian Formalism in an attempt to identify what united, and unites, the work of scholars such as Viktor Shklovsky, Yury Tynyanov, Roman Jakobson, Boris Eykhenbaum, and Boris Tomashevsky."-Times Literary Supplement