My dissertation examines Russian Formalist critic Viktor Shklovsky's theory of ostranenie (estrangement) and its relationship to the aesthetic thought of the Russian Silver Age, in particular the writings of Lev Tolstoy and Vladimir Mayakovsky, analyses of whose work form the foundaton of much of Shklovsky's thought on art. I argue that, contrary to the critical view that places estrangement within the context of Jakobsonian linguistic Formalism, Shklovsky's theory, particularly when considered within the Silver Age context, is a "defense of poetry" that offers a way out of the linguistic/structural model by mediating between Cartesian, linguistically-oriented, "written" thought and apophatic, experiential, "oral" thought, crossing disciplinary and conceptual boundaries in favor of a more organic ontology that also makes room for non-Western and traditional/oral art forms.