Jan Mukařovský

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Jan Mukařovský, around 1932

Jan Mukařovský (born November 11, 1891 in Písek , † February 8, 1975 in Prague ) was a Czechoslovak literary scholar , Slavist and literary theorist who, from the end of the 1920s until his death, played a key role in establishing Prague literary structuralism as a new kind of literary theoretical paradigm has contributed with great influence outside the narrow subject boundaries of Slavic Studies .

His literary achievements include u. a. the consistent application of linguistic structuralism and its foundations, developed by the Geneva linguist Ferdinand de Saussure , to literary and literary historical phenomena as well as the systematic application and expansion of the linguistic functional concept to literary works and their reception in different epochs.

In addition, based on the Russian formalism , Mukařovský made decisive contributions to a literary theory of the evolution of the literary series , which is still discussed in professional circles today.

Life

After graduating from high school, Mukařovský studied linguistics and aesthetics at the Charles University in Prague and graduated with success in 1915. In 1922 he obtained his doctorate. Until 1925 he worked as a high school teacher in Pilsen, then at a Prague high school. In 1926 he was one of the co-founders of the Prague linguist circle around the influential Russian Slavist Roman Jakobson , with whom Mukařovský was close friends. In 1929 Mukařovský completed his habilitation with the theoretical work Máchův Máj. Estetická study of the romantic Czech poet Karel Hynek Mácha in the field of literary aesthetics .

In 1934 Mukařovský was appointed professor at the University of Bratislava in Slovakia , in 1938 he was appointed extraordinary professor of aesthetics at the Charles University in Prague, which, however - like all other Czech universities - was held in November 1939 after student unrest by the new National Socialist rulers As part of the special Prague was closed. From 1941 to 1947 Mukařovský worked as an editor. 1948, d. H. in the year of the communist coup, Mukařovský became a full professor at the reopened Prague University. In the same year he was also elected its rector and held this office until 1953. Due to increasing Stalinist pressure, Mukařovský revoked his pre-war structuralism on the theory of signs. In 1951, Mukařovský was also appointed director of the Institute for Czech Literature of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences , which he headed until 1962.

In 1960 he took part as a guest at the 3rd Christian Peace Conference (CFK) in Prague, which he welcomed on behalf of the Czechoslovak Peace Committee.

Scientific importance

The importance of Jan Mukařovský cannot be separated from his work in the Prague linguistic circle (to which Roman Jakobson belonged, with whom he was close friends). Rather, he should play the "role of the inspirer" and give decisive literary-theoretical and scientific-practical impulses in the direction of a "functional-structural conception of language", which should advance beyond the borders of linguistics into poetics and aesthetics - not only the Czechoslovakian. However, the reception of his literary theoretical conception has remained incomplete in the West due to linguistic and ideological barriers.

Jan Mukařovský suggests understanding the literary work as a complex work symbol and distinguishes four basic functions of language: the performing, expressive, appellative and the "aesthetic" function. He thus follows the basic idea of Karl Bühler , who introduced the first three functions in "language theory", but sees this conception only useful for a "purely communicative utterance". In the "analysis of the poetic utterance", however, according to Jan Mukařovský, the fourth is important: "[S] he focuses on the composition of the linguistic sign, while the first three tend towards extra-linguistic instances and goals that exceed the language sign ". The aesthetic function of language is "omnipresent" for Jan Mukařovský, responsible for "lexical innovations" in the use of language and "always appears as an autonomous sign".

The emphasis on the aesthetic is also reflected in the basic essays on the question: What is a work of art? In "Art as a Semiological Fact", Jan Mukařovský emphasizes two properties of the work of art: the autonomous function and the communicative function. The former refers to the property that the work of art "serves as an intermediary between the members of the same collective". The second aims at the "indefinite reality to which the work of art points", namely the "overall context of the so-called social phenomena: e.g. philosophy, politics, religion, economy, etc."

Mukařovskýs in several studies from 1923 to 1943 designed and analytically proven concept of a semantic gesture (ch .: sémantické gesto ) that controls the literary text semantics between author and recipient, is in essence the one hand close to what Umberto Eco later than intentio operis has called . On the other hand, according to Milan Jankovič, Mukařovský's approach goes beyond that, because "from the point of view of the recipient, the path to meaning has an 'open end.'" Seen in this way, Mukařovský's concept and Eco's "poetics of the open work of art" (Italian: "Opera aperta", 1972; German: "The open work of art", 1977).

In addition, Mukařovský is one of the few literary theorists who have made consistent efforts to combine the problem of literary valuation with the theory of literary evolution.

literature

Primary

  • Jan Mukařovský. Chapter from poetics. Frankfurt / M. (Suhrkamp), 1967 [Orig. 1948].

therein: The poetic naming and the aesthetic function of language [Orig. 1936], pp. 44-54

  • Jan Mukařovský. Chapter from aesthetics. Frankfurt / M. (Suhrkamp), 1970. ISBN 3-518-00428-X

therein: Art as a semiological fact [Orig. 1936], pp. 138-147

  • Jan Mukařovský. Studies in structuralist aesthetics and poetics. Munich (Ullstein), 1977. ISBN 3-548-03311-3
  • Jan Mukařovský. Writings on aesthetics, art theory and poetics. Tübingen (Narr), 1986. ISBN 3-87808-316-5
  • Jan Mukařovský. Art, poetics, semiotics. Frankfurt / M. (Suhrkamp), 1989. ISBN 3-518-57840-5

Secondary

  • Peter Burg: Jan Mukařovský. Genesis and system of the Czech structural aesthetics. Hieronymus, Neuried 1985. ISBN 3-88893-038-3 , ( typescript edition Hieronymus. Slavic languages ​​and literatures 4) [Diss. Univ. of the Saarland]
  • Peter Burg: Tradition and history of the development of aesthetic and poetological thought by Jan Mukařovský . In: Wolfgang F. Schwarz (ed.) In collaboration with Jiří Holý and Milan Jankovič: Prague School - Continuity and Change. Works on literary aesthetics and poetics of narration . Vervuert, Frankfurt / M. 1997, ISBN 3-89354-261-2 , ( Leipziger Schriften […] 1) pp. 89–99
  • Květoslav Chvatík: Jan Mukařovský, Roman Jakobson and the Prague Linguistic Circle . In: Květoslav Chvatík: Man and Structure. Chapters from neo-structural aesthetics and poetics . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1987, ISBN 3-518-28281-6 , ( Suhrkamp-Taschenbuch Wissenschaft 681)
  • Milan Jankovič: Paths to Open Mind. In: Wolfgang F. Schwarz (ed.) In collaboration with Jiří Holý and Milan Jankovič: Prague School - Continuity and Change. Works on literary aesthetics and poetics of narration . Vervuert, Frankfurt / M. 1997, ISBN 3-89354-261-2 , ( Leipziger Schriften […] 1), 183–195
  • Walter Schamschula: Mukařovský (1891–1975) . In: Horst Turk (ed.): Classics of literary theory. CH Beck, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-406-06792-1 , ( Beck'sche black series 192), pp. 238-250
  • Herta Schmid: The 'three-phase model' of the Czech literary structuralism. In: Karl Eimermacher [et al.], (Ed.): Issues in Slavic Literary and Cultural Theory. Brockmeyer, Bochum 1989, ISBN 3-88339-750-4 ( Bochum Publications in Evolutionary Cultural Semiotics 21), pp. 107-152
  • Herta Schmid: Literature as Art. Studies on Czech structuralism. Edited by Birgit Krehl. Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles 2019, ISBN 978-3-631-77876-0 , ( SLOVO , 3),
  • Wolfgang F. Schwarz: Some Remarks on the Development, Noetic Range and Operational Disposition of Mukařovský's Term 'Semantic Gesture' . In: Karl Eimermacher [et al.], (Ed.): Issues in Slavic Literary and Cultural Theory. Brockmeyer, Bochum 1989, ISBN 3-88339-750-4 ( Bochum Publications in Evolutionary Cultural Semiotics 21), pp. 153-178
  • Wolfgang F. Schwarz: The 'semantic gesture' - a useful analytical instrument? On the development and criticism of a key concept in Mukařovský's literary aesthetics. In: Wolfgang F. Schwarz (ed.) In collaboration with Jiří Holý and Milan Jankovič: Prague School - Continuity and Change. Works on literary aesthetics and poetics of narration . Vervuert, Frankfurt / M. 1997, ISBN 3-89354-261-2 , ( Leipziger Schriften […] 1), pp. 197–222

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Chvatík 1987, 173
  2. ↑ Mukařovský 1938, 48
  3. ↑ Mukařovský 1938, 47
  4. ↑ Mukařovský 1936, 140
  5. ↑ For the development of Mukařovský's term see p. Schwarz 1997, 197-222
  6. ↑ Jankovič 1997, 194
personal data
SURNAME Mukařovský, Jan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Literary scholar
DATE OF BIRTH November 11, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Písek
DATE OF DEATH February 8, 1975
Place of death Prague