Palacký University, Olomouc Roman O. Jakobson: A Work in Progress edited and with an introduction by Tomáš Kubíček and Andrew Lass Olomouc 2014 Recenzenti: prof. PhDr. Petr A. Bílek, CSc. prof. PhDr. Dagmar Mocná, CSc. Publikace vznikla v rámci projektu Inovace bohemistických studií v mezioborových kontextech. Tento projekt je spolufi nancován Evropským sociálním fondem a státním rozpočtem České republiky. Zpracování a vydání publikace bylo umožněno díky fi nanční podpoře udělené roku 2014 Ministerstvem školství, mládeže a tělovýchovy ČR v rámci Institucionálního rozvojového plánu, programu V. Excelence, Filozofi cké fakultě Univerzity Palackého v Olomouci: Zlepšení publikačních možností akademických pedagogů ve fi lologických a humanitních oborech. Neoprávněné užití tohoto díla je porušením autorských práv a může zakládat občanskoprávní, správněprávní, popř. trestněprávní odpovědnost. Editors © Tomáš Kubíček and Andrew Lass, 2014 © Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci, 2014 ISBN 978-80-244-4386-7 Neprodejná publikace Content Introduction .................................................................................................................5 Parallelism in prose ...................................................................................................11 Wolf Schmid Reopening the “Closing statement”: Jakobson’s factors and functions in our Google Galaxy .......................................25 Peter W. Nesselroth Elective Affi nities: Roman Jakobson, Claude Lévi-Strauss and his Antropologie Structurale ..............................................................................37 Andrew Lass Functional Semiotics of the Prague School: Functional Semiotics and New Narratology ..........................................................55 Tomáš Kubíček Roman Jakobson’s work on poetic language from the point of view of the revival of rhetoric in the 20th century .........................................................65 Jiří Kraus HABENT SUA FATA INVENTIONES. Th e Role of Czechoslovakian Slavistics in the Forming of the Parry-Lord Oral-Formulaic Th eory .................77 Sylva Fischerová Words that refer to their utterance: Jakobson and Benveniste on shift ers .......103 Eva Krásová Janua linguarum or At the beginning was the word ...........................................121 Božena Bednaříková Frequency of parts of speech in Adolf Heyduk’s poetry .....................................133 Petr Plecháč – Robert Ibrahim Roman Jakobson’s Research into Judeo-Czech ....................................................145 Robert Dittmann Jakobson’s Ruse: “Artifi ce” in the Context of Functional Aesthetics and Sign Th eory .......................................................................................................155 Richard Müller – Pavel Šidák “What is Poetry?” Reconsidered............................................................................171 David Skalický 3 Jakobson: Th e Experimental Stage and the Beginnings of Multimedia Th eory .............................................................................................183 Veronika Ambros Roman Jakobson’s “Semiotics of Fun”: A Contribution to the Prague School’s Th eories of Drama and Th eatre, and to a Conceptualization of Voskovec and Werich’s “Free-fl oating” Comedy ..........................................................................................193 Eva Šlaisová Conference program ...............................................................................................203 4 Introduction Introduction A few years ago, in an animated conversation with our dear friend and collea- gue, Professor Lubomír Doležel, the topic of structuralism and cognitive linguistics inevitably led us where it had taken us many times before, to Roman Osipovič Jakobson (1896–1982). It occurred to us that this pattern revealed a discrepancy that, in turn, spoke clearly to a need. Namely, the frequency with which Jakobson’s name comes up in conversation seemed not to be matched by an engaged discussion of his ideas in current research and it was therefore high time to revisit the place this pioneer and grandmaster of the science of language and signifi cation held in contemporary Czech scholarship. Th ereof was born the idea for the international conference that took place December 10–11, 2012 in Olomouc (Czech Republic) at Palacký University’s School of Humanities under the auspices of the Department of Czech Studies. As we noted in our call for papers, the aim of the conference was to shed new light on the importance of an extraordinary scientifi c personality whose work and ideas infl uenced not only modern Czech literary science and linguistics, but also contributed considerably to laying the foundations of several new fi elds of science, such as phonology, communication theory or cognitive linguistics, and strengthened the foundations of a newly formed science of semiotics. Jakobson participated in the creation of the institutional base of Czech structuralism; he helped establish contacts and relations between Czech and foreign scientifi c environments as he also developed mutually productive relations among the representatives of the scientifi c, cultural and artistic life in Czechoslovakia. Finally, he made the intellectual potential and intellectual heritage of the Prague School of Structuralism available to linguistics and literary science worldwide. Th e two days of eighteen inspiring lectures and lively discussions brought together scholars from several countries, including Germany, France, the United States and Canada as well as the Czech Republic. Th e broad range of topics and interdisciplinary approaches that not only referenced and further explored his initiatives but also challenged them would have no doubt cheered Jakobson. Reading encyclopedic entries devoted to Roman Jakobson off ers an odd feeling of safety. Everything is well organized, lucid and complete. However, to take an example from our own research, a careful reading of his classic study What is poetry? reveals an argument full of contradictions. Th ese contradictions provide an energetic impulse and infl uence one’s own thinking even more so because the author never explained or resolved them as his attention turned in other 5 Introduction directions. One of the sources of inspiring ideas as well as permanent tensions that draw many back to Jakobson’s studies and that informs the study on poetry mentioned above, lies at the core of his scientifi c method as it continued to develop since the beginning of 1930s. It is his emphasis on the character of the linguistic sign as a means of communication. As early as 1933, the publication date of What is Poetry?, Jakobson came to a realization that the Saussurean concept of the sign, defi ned as the unity of signifi er and signifi ed was, in its take on semiosis as process, vulnerable to very strong criticisms that demanded that he look elsewhere for the source of the identity of meaning. It is our opinion that What is poetry? marks the decisive moment in Jakobson’s radical parting with the essentialist poetics of the Formalist school and signals his inclination towards a conditional poetics. For Jakobson the answer to the question of “what makes a literary work literary” could not lie with a simple reference to formalist literariness (poeticalnes) or estrangement (priyom ostranenie) which cease to play a pivotal role. It is the status of fi ction itself that is now incorporated into the question as Jakobson’s attention moves away from the immanent structure of the text to regions that make for the larger structures of which a literary work is part. Still, this is a tricky move and that is why Jakobson, in the fi nal part of his study, does not hesitate to strengthen the central place of a text in the process of meaning formation, in the process of communication. Th at is why his concluding assertion, given what he stated in the earlier part of the study, that “poeticalnes is a sui generis phenomenon” strikes one as rather confusing. An alarming crack appears. Solving this riddle belongs among the many ongoing adventures of semiotics. Th e point is that in the 1933 study many of the problematic categories of communication, such as code, subject or context, had in eff ect escaped from Pandora’s box. Aft er all, if you read What is poetry? carefully, you will fi nd out that as early as in 1933 Jakobson formulated the fi rst outlines of what would later appear in the study Linguistics and Poetics (1958) as the famous model of communication. In other words, to engage with Jakobson’s oeuvre should be understood as an invitation to a dialog. To come back to Jakobson does not and should not mean a return to the safe territory of complete answers. Th at surely would contradict the spirit of Jakobson’s studies. Aft er all, Jakobson was himself interested in the discrepancies that marked theoretical developments. In one such case that appeared in his study Quest for the Essence of Language, he suggested that there is no temporal gap dividing theories; that questions, once introduced in a debate, remain as its permanent components, a point he illustrated using Plato to make an argument against Peirce. Th eory, as Jakobson understood it, is not subject to evolution; the engine of progress does not drive it and it will never reach perfection as its fi nal state since cognition cannot be perfect and stay human at the same time. Nevertheless, any theory must be based in a broadly 6 Introduction conceived self-refl ection and self-criticism