Prague Structuralism and Poetics
Prague structuralism developed a functional, systemic poetics that linked the Russian Formalist study of devices to linguistics and to the social life of literary norms.
Definition
A structuralist tradition, centred on the Prague Linguistic Circle and its successors, that analyzes literature as a functional system in which devices such as foregrounding serve an aesthetic function within a wider semiotic and social context.
Scope
This topic covers the Prague Linguistic Circle (founded 1926), its functional approach to language and verse, Mukarovsky's account of the aesthetic function and of foregrounding, and Jakobson's influential model of the functions of language and the poetic function. It also covers the broader structuralist poetics, exemplified by Culler, that sought to describe the system of conventions enabling readers to make sense of literary texts.
Core questions
- What is the aesthetic function, and how does it relate to other functions of language?
- How does 'foregrounding' distinguish poetic from communicative language?
- What are the functions served by any act of verbal communication?
- What system of conventions allows competent readers to interpret literary works?
Key theories
- Functions of language and the poetic function
- Jakobson's model identifies six factors and corresponding functions in communication; the poetic function, oriented toward the message for its own sake, projects equivalence onto the axis of combination, explaining patterning such as metre and parallelism.
- Aesthetic function and foregrounding
- Mukarovsky's view that the aesthetic function foregrounds the act of expression itself, and that literary norms and values are social facts that shift historically rather than being fixed properties of texts.
- Literary competence
- Culler's proposal that structuralist poetics should describe the implicit 'literary competence' by which readers, drawing on internalized conventions, convert sequences of words into meaningful literary works.
History
The Prague Linguistic Circle, founded in 1926, brought together Czech scholars and emigre Russian Formalists such as Jakobson. It developed functional and structural approaches to phonology and poetics through the 1930s. After the war, Jakobson carried these ideas to the United States, where his 1960 essay shaped linguistic poetics, while structuralist poetics was synthesized for the anglophone world by Culler (1975).
Debates
- Whether poetics can be a rigorous science
- Disagreement over how far the systematic, linguistics-based study of literature can capture the meaning and value of literary works, or whether it formalizes only their surface patterns.
Key figures
- Roman Jakobson
- Jan Mukarovsky
- Nikolai Trubetzkoy
- Jonathan Culler
Related topics
Seminal works
- jakobson1960
- mukarovsky1936
- culler1975
Frequently asked questions
- What is foregrounding?
- Foregrounding is the deliberate deviation from ordinary linguistic norms, or the systematic patterning of language, that draws attention to the form of an utterance and characterizes the aesthetic function in Prague School poetics.
- How is the Prague School related to Russian Formalism?
- It absorbed Formalist ideas, partly through Jakobson, but reframed them in functional and structural terms, embedding the study of devices within a broader account of language functions and social norms.