Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Lubomír Doležel
Slavic and Comparative Literature, Toronto
. In his introduction to the English translation of Todorov’s work, Peter Brooks (: vii)
states that ‘‘Todorov . . . commands the Slavic tradition, Russian Formalism and the work
of the Prague Linguistic Circle.’’ But ironically, the only references to the Prague school and
Jan Mukarovsky [sic] are in Brooks’s introduction.
Doležel • Poststructuralism: A View from Charles Bridge 635
the haute culture milieu of modern Paris’’ (ibid.: x). He states, correctly,
that Mukařovský’s ideas ‘‘had no discernible influence on structuralist lit-
erary theory of the s’’ (ibid.: ). Only a few Western histories of mod-
ern poetics, such as Broekman and Fokkema and Kunne-Ibsch ,
do not ignore Prague school structuralism. But no matter how structuralist
historians regard the Prague school, the fact remains that there is no histori-
cal continuity between Prague and French structuralism.2 Russian formal-
ism in aesthetics and poetics and the Copenhagen school in linguistics are
the intellectual roots of French structuralism (see Todorov ; Greimas
).3 In other words, there is no straight road leading from Russia to the
centers of structuralist aesthetics and poetics; rather, there is a forked road,
with one branch leading to prewar Prague, the other to postwar Paris.
So what is the relation between poststructuralism and Prague school
structuralism and, especially, how does the poststructuralist challenge
apply to Prague school poetics and aesthetics? I ask this to initiate a broader
exploration of the theoretical relationships between poststructuralist trends
and their structuralist antecedents. I believe that such a framework will give
a better understanding of the continuities, conflicts, and confusions which
characterize the intellectual history of the twentieth century.
Deconstruction
. To be sure, Roman Jakobson was a hero of the French structuralists, but he was seen as a
direct link between Russian Formalism and French structuralism. Only a few of his papers
originating in his Prague school years appeared in French and then only in Textes des formalistes
russes.
. For a summary of the theoretical differences between the Prague school and Russian for-
malism, see Mukařovský . Skalička – provides a useful comparison between the
linguistic structuralism of Prague and Copenhagen.
636 Poetics Today 21:4
from this. The system of assumptions defining the collective enterprise of scien-
tific mastery is one of the things it wants to put in question by disarticulating it
or by showing that it disarticulates itself. This means showing that it contains
contradictions and aporias making its enterprise impossible.
This is a rather long quote, but useful in that it sets out the contrary positions
clearly and uncompromisingly. In another context, when Miller contrasts
poststructuralism with New Criticism, he maintains that the New Critics
strive for ‘‘organic unity,’’ for ‘‘total and totalizable significance’’ of literary
texts; in contrast, the deconstructivists claim that literary texts are ‘‘unread-
able’’: ‘‘Unreadability is the generation by the text itself of a desire for the
possession of the logos, while at the same time the text frustrates this desire,
in a torsion of undecidability which is intrinsic to language’’ (: , ).
But how does an ‘‘uncanny’’ critic go about analyzing ‘‘unreadable’’ texts,
and what can the critic say about them? Following Miller’s engagement
with Thomas Hardy’s poem ‘‘In Front of the Landscape,’’ we see him switch-
ing back and forth between two analytical techniques or levels. On the
first level, he painstakingly explains the meanings of obscure and polysemic
words and phrases to produce a prosaic paraphrase of the poem, a summary
of its ‘‘content,’’ or, as he calls it, its ‘‘tropography’’: ‘‘There is a lot of guilt
around somewhere. It is guilt born of betrayal of trust. Both the speaker and
the ghosts are suffering intensely for it. Exactly what betrayal is in question
for each of the ghosts the reader is not told. He knows only that they were
once fair and happy and that the speaker ‘fellowed’ with them. Later they
were betrayed by him or by others, or thought they were betrayed’’ (:
). On the second level, Miller sees the poem not as paraphrasable content,
but as a ‘‘complex act of translation’’: ‘‘The ghosts and the scenes, objects,
episodes . . . are transposed not just into words, but into words architectur-
ally or musically ordered’’ (ibid.: ). To reveal the architecture and music
of the poem, Miller reconstructs its wavelike rhythmic and rhyming pat-
tern and its ‘‘tropography’’; that is, its dominant poetic (rhetorical) device:
prosopopoeia overlapping with catachresis (ibid.: –, –).6 Thus, the
second analytical move of the deconstructionist critic dismantles the para-
phrase, penetrating beyond the prosaic content to the aesthetic form. In
Miller’s poetological practice, deconstruction is a displacement of the pro-
saic transcription of poetic texts. As such, it is a challenge to the traditional
interpretive practice that strips the poetic work of its aesthetic features to
find its message. Miller is doing exactly what all who closely analyze poetic
texts, including Prague school poetics, have always done: describing the
poetic text as an aesthetic (artistic) phenomenon, but he avoids linguistic or
text theoretic conceptualization and resorts to metaphoric terminology or,
in the best case, to the traditional vocabulary of rhetoric.7
The similarity between deconstructionist poetological praxis and Prague
school poetics is not accidental; it has hidden roots in a common perception
of what constitutes the basic features of poetic language. Jacques Derrida’s
philosophy of language grows out of the assumption that linguistic signs
mean only in différance, in an infinite regress of contrastive linking of sig-
nifiant to signifiant. Already in (albeit with question marks) Derrida
(: ) staked out the claim of this semantics: ‘‘And what if the meaning
of meaning (in the general sense, not in the sense of signification) is an infinite
inference? An indefinite referral of a signified to a signified? What if its force
is a certain pure and infinite ambiguity that allows no respite, no rest to the
signified meaning, engaging it, in its own economy, to make sign again and to
differ?’’ [‘‘Et si le sens du sens {au sens général et non de signification}, c’est
l’implication infinie? Le renvoi indéfini de signifiant à signifiant? Si sa force
est une certaine équivocité pure et infinie ne laissant aucun répit, aucun
repos au sens signifié, l’engageant, en sa propre économie, à faire signe encore
et à différer?’’] When the question marks are deleted, Derrida constructs a
language with radically indeterminate meaning. In such a language refer-
ence cannot be fixed, and, therefore, standard (Tarskian) truth-conditions
do not apply. It is impossible to conduct science, philosophy, historiogra-
phy, and other cognitive activities in Derridean language. But if we ignore
the universalist claim of Derrida’s philosophy of language and treat it as a
theory of poetic language, then the connection with Prague school poetics
becomes apparent. We know that Mukařovský assigned two fundamental
features to poetic language: first, poetic language transforms ‘‘communica-
tive language,’’ the ‘‘material’’ of literature, into an aesthetic structure by
procedures of organized deformation; second, in poetic language the ques-
tion of truthfulness does not arise (see Doležel a: , ). Peter Nessel-
roth (: ) says of the link between Mukařovský’s ‘‘deformation’’ and
Derrida’s ‘‘de-automatization’’ that ‘‘Deconstructive reading . . . depends
. ‘‘Rhetoric,’’ Miller (: ) explains, ‘‘means in this case the investigation of figures
of speech rather than the study of the art of persuasion.’’ Rhetorical terminology is widely
used in deconstructive criticism; see, for example, Christopher Norris (: ) on Paul de
Man: ‘‘One needs theory to avoid reading stupidly, accepting language at face value, which
is always the value placed on it by commonsense belief or ideology. In de Man this takes the
form of a heightened attention to rhetoric and the way that rhetorical tropes can undermine
the logic or the grammar of straightforward assertion.’’
Doležel • Poststructuralism: A View from Charles Bridge 639
Pragmatics
. Elmar Holenstein () has recognized that polyfunctionalism is one of the most impor-
tant achievements of Prague school thinking about language.
. ‘‘All language and not just literary language, is informed by the play of différance. If we take
literary to mean something more than merely ‘decorative’, then, in a sense, all language may
be seen as literary’’ ( Jefferson : ).
640 Poetics Today 21:4
. Indexical pragmatics entered poetics in the study of the literary work’s discursive subjec-
tivity, as it pertains to the lyrical subject and to narrative discourses (narrative modes, direct,
indirect, and represented discourse), and so on.
. As should be expected from a dogmatic ideologue, all these critiques are hurled at struc-
turalism without reference to sources and with the tone and discernment of a provincial
populist politician.
Doležel • Poststructuralism: A View from Charles Bridge 641
and so on. The literary pragmatics of Mary Louise Pratt () and Roger
Fowler () are typical in this respect, both in their positive contribution
to and their negative attitude toward the structuralist past. Pratt’s critique
of the ‘‘poetic language fallacy’’ is two-pronged: () if the formalists and
structuralists posited the opposition poetic/nonpoetic language, then they
had the duty to investigate both sides of it. Yet, Pratt claims, only the con-
cept of poetic language was defined, while its opposite—variously called
‘‘ordinary,’’ ‘‘communicative,’’ ‘‘practical’’ language—remained an indefi-
nite contrastive frame of reference. () It is not the concept of language
(langue) that is pertinent for literary theory, but the concept of the use of
language ( parole).
Pratt launches a rash critique of structuralism on these grounds; how-
ever, I find them perfectly compatible with Prague school thinking. First,
by formulating functional linguistics, the Prague school linguists and poeti-
cians were certainly developing a theory of language use (see Herman ).
Second, functional linguistics was transformed into functional stylistics in
the thirties and forties, and Bohuslav Havránek () proposed a system
of styles which included both poetic and nonpoetic types (conversational,
technological, and scientific). Ten years earlier () Havránek had inves-
tigated the lexical and syntactic devices of scientific discourse (technical
terms, ‘‘automatisms,’’ conventions), and during the war Vilém Mathesius
studied the principles of expository style (published in Mathesius ).
Other functional styles came under close scrutiny as well, especially the
language of commerce (Čada ; Vančura ). Obviously, the Prague
school did not focus solely on poetic language use; it also initiated the study
of the functions, norms, and devices of nonpoetic styles (uses).13
Roger Fowler’s (: ) concept of literary communication verges on
ideological pragmatics. This is apparent when he uncovers a ‘‘class’’ mo-
tivation behind the idea of poetic language: ‘‘The idea of a special poetic
language remote from common speech suits a society in which only a very
small special class of people read the texts in that language.’’ But, like most
‘‘short circuits’’ of ideological pragmatics, this determinism is dubious. In
fact, one could claim just the opposite: in prewar Russia and Czechoslo-
vakia, where the specificity of poetic language was strongly emphasized,
reading poetry or listening to declamations was very popular. It seems
rather that cultures where the authority and impact of literature is restricted
to ‘‘only a very small special class of people’’ tend to blur the distinctions
. In the postwar era, Czech stylistics built on the heritage of the Prague school and investi-
gated both theoretical and practical aspects of nonpoetic styles (for a survey, see Doležel and
Kraus : –).
Doležel • Poststructuralism: A View from Charles Bridge 643
between literature and other social discourses, between aesthetic value and
kitsch, between art and entertainment.
In the end, both Pratt and Fowler present a reception puzzle. While they
reject the Prague school initiative, they ultimately reassert the specificity
of literature within their respective pragmatics of literary communication.
Pratt (: ) concludes her monograph by introducing the concept of
‘‘verbal jeopardy’’: ‘‘In the literary speech situation . . . rule-breaking can
be the point of the utterance.’’ 14 Fowler’s (: ) acknowledgment of the
pragmatic specificity of literature is less definite, but equally clear: ‘‘Literary
communication (a type of language use) may be a distinctive form of behav-
iour even though ‘literary texts’ and ‘poetic language’ are not distinctive.’’
It is not explained how a ‘‘deviant’’ speech act situation or a ‘‘distinctive’’
form of behavior have no impact on the language medium and do not affect
its products.
The above quote from Siegfried Schmidt is taken from his programmatic
outline of the tasks of the empirical study of literature (empirische Literatur-
wissenschaft). This research project has become a major force in the post-
structuralist paradigm, especially in continental Europe. Literary commu-
nication is the basis of both the structuralism of the Prague school and
the poststructuralist empirische Literaturwissenschaft. Moreover, as observed,
Prague school aesthetics and poetics were empirical theories.15
Despite these common foundations, the relationship between the con-
temporary empirical study of literature and Prague structuralism is quite
. This ‘‘deviance’’ is possible because in the literary speech situation Grice’s Cooperative
Principle is ‘‘hyperprotected’’: ‘‘For clearly it is because we know the CP to be hyperprotected
in the literary speech situation that we can freely and joyfully jeopardize it or even cancel
it there and expose ourselves to the chaotic consequences’’ (). It is secondary to Pratt’s
(: ) argument that such ‘‘hyperprotection’’ and consequent ‘‘verbal jeopardy’’ is found
in other ritualized speech situations. What is of prime importance is that the specificity of
literature is moved from langue to language use, a move which Prague structuralism made
more than sixty years ago.
. Felix Vodička (: ) perceived this feature in Mukařovský’s work when he provided
an evaluation of his teacher’s method: ‘‘Mukařovský did not proceed from general, essen-
tially philosophical problems of aesthetics, but from the empirical study of verbal material in
literary works.’’ When, in turn, Vodička’s own work was assessed by his disciple Miroslav Čer-
venka (: –), the same epistemological principle was revealed: ‘‘Today, there is much
speculation about the relationship between Marxism and structuralism, existentialism and
structuralism, etc., as if we were dealing with a confrontation of contradictory philosophical
trends. However, structuralism as conceived by Mukařovský, Jakobson, Vodička and their
disciples . . . is not a philosophy, but a methodological trend in certain sciences, especially
those concerned with sign systems and their concrete uses.’’
644 Poetics Today 21:4
complex. In a more recent article, Schmidt (: ) labeled his episte-
mological strategy—constructivism and its consequent relativism—‘‘post-
modernist.’’ This epistemology is at variance with the basic assumptions of
Prague school poeticians and aestheticians who were spontaneous realists.16
Yet in his research Schmidt and his group pursue a science of literature and
apply methodologies and cognitive strategies in full accord with the prac-
tice of Prague structuralism. This is apparent in Schmidt’s rigorous con-
ceptualization. The study of literature, like all empirical research, requires
‘‘intensive conceptual effort, ‘die Arbeit am Begriff,’ as Hegel once put it. . . .
Without a thorough clarification of (what counts for us as) our knowledge
we are neither able to formulate questions with empirical content nor can
we operationalise these questions in order to produce and interpret ‘data’ in
the framework of theories and methodologies’’ (ibid.: ). The concepts of
literary theory form a system, as do the concepts of every science: ‘‘All key
notions of our discipline . . . are extremely conditioned and interrelated;
they are nodes in networks which nobody can trace back to their origins’’
(ibid.: ). In Prague, rigorous concept formation and systematization were
emphasized to the point that Mukařovský identified these procedures with
structuralism. Structuralism is ‘‘an epistemological stance’’ whose essence
is ‘‘the manner by which it forms its concepts and operates with them.’’ In
the structuralist view ‘‘the conceptual system of every particular discipline
is a web of internal correlations. Every concept is determined by all the
others and in turn determines them. Thus a concept is defined unequivo-
cally by the place it occupies in its conceptual system rather than by the
enumeration of its contents’’ (: , –).
So despite its postmodernist flavoring, empirische Literaturwissenschaft un-
wittingly develops the legacy of Prague structuralism in two essential fea-
tures: the centrality of literary communication and the insistence on con-
ceptual rigor.These features characterize one and the same cognitive effort:
to establish a science of the specificity of literature, satisfying contemporary
scientific standards.
. This formulation goes back to (see Ricoeur : ).
. Windelband does not merit mention in Helmut Seiffert’s () history of hermeneutics.
Nor does Ricoeur, but that is because hermeneutics for Seiffert is an exclusively German
enterprise. Grondin () mentions Ricoeur a few times (although he does not admit him
into the pleiad of contemporary hermeneuticians), but Windelband is an unknown entity for
him.
. The address is reprinted in Windelband under the title ‘‘Geschichte und Natur-
wissenschaft.’’ For a recent rereading of Windelband, see Doležel b.
646 Poetics Today 21:4
. Investigating, for example, the use of personal pronouns in poetic texts, Jakobson dem-
onstrated the individuality of such works as the Hussite battle song, Puškin’s love poetry, and
a political poem by Brecht. His meticulous study revealed that each of Puškin’s poems is indi-
vidualized: ‘‘Despite the common grammatical pattern of Puškin’s poetry, each of his poems
is unique and unrepeatable in its artistic choice and use of grammatical material’’ (originally
published in ; quoted in Jakobson : ). In an apposite comment, Pomorska (Jakob-
son and Pomorska : ) characterized Jakobson’s method as a tool that ‘‘allows us both
to generalize and individualize the phenomena under investigation.’’
. The zigzag method originates in Wilhelm von Humboldt’s monograph on Goethe’s
poem ‘‘Hermann und Dorothea’’ (see Doležel a, –). Roland Barthes’s S/Z () is
a more recent (and more celebrated) example of this method and its presentation. Doležel
develops a cognitive strategy based on the zigzag method.
Doležel • Poststructuralism: A View from Charles Bridge 647
. In reply to a critic who doubted that ideographic research could achieve scientific status,
Gordon Allport (: , ) stressed the need to develop ‘‘new concepts and methods’’
to deal with ‘‘the phenomenon of individual pattern.’’ But he insisted that under a ‘‘custom-
ary’’ definition of science—‘‘that form of knowledge that enhances our understanding, pre-
diction and control of phenomena above the level achieved by unaided common sense’’—
‘‘idiographic knowledge fully qualifies for a place of honor.’’
648 Poetics Today 21:4
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