Verfremdung is usually translated as alienation.It's a translation of Russian prijom ostranenie 'making strange'. The Russian Formalist Shklovskij coined the term, and Brecht adopted it for theatre as Verfremdungseffekt 'alienation device'.

[Addendum: I'd forgotten it's also called a distancing effect (link).]

Last edited by zmjezhd; 09/29/2008 9:12 PM.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.