Poeticism

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Poeticism ( neologism of the 20th century; borrowing from the Russian поэтичность) describes the aesthetic linguistic character of a poetic work . The use of the term is usually accompanied by the assumption that the properties of a text that make it a poetic text are linguistic properties.

Expression

The Russian variant of the term "poeticity" - поэтичность - is a stylistically neutral derivation of the widely used Russian adjective поэтичный, "poetic", and therefore does not have the scientistic connotation that the German expression has with the suffix "-icity".

The origin of the expression

For this reason, the Russian-Ukrainian philologist Alexander Potebnja was probably not the first to use the Russian term; However, he was the first to assign it a central role as a terminus technicus in literary theory as early as 1862 . When, after the turn of the century, his writings were widely received in Russia, the Russian formalists adopted the expression in their analysis of Potebnja's literary theory and integrated it into their own conception of literature. One of them, Roman Jakobson , introduced the synonym " literarity " (литературность) in his treatise On the Latest Russian Poetry , published in 1921, and henceforth used both expressions. With his emigration, Jakobson brought the terms to the West, where they found their way into the literary theoretical discourse since the 1960s and with the spread of literary structuralism .

term

The concept of the poetic or literary has changed dramatically over time. This suggests that there is not just one concept of the literary, but several that have superseded or compete with one another. What is special about the concept of poeticism is that it refers to a literary concept that implies the assumption that it is the linguistic qualities of a literary text that distinguish it from non-literary texts. This means that the concept of poeticism competes with literary terms according to which the literary is a “spiritual” quality that cannot be further characterized and is only revealed in the enthusiasm of appreciative recipients. In contrast, the concept of poeticity is linked to the claim that the literary properties of a text can be scientifically determined and presented in a comprehensible manner for everyone. Even if this position is met with great skepticism today, its contribution to the process of scientification of literary studies should not be underestimated.

The history of the term

When Potebnja coined the aesthetic linguistic concept of poeticity, he did not invent anything completely new, but tied in with older theories, namely Wilhelm von Humboldt's idea of ​​the inner form of language, which was supposed to substantiate the diversity of worldviews with which different languages ​​are linked according to Humboldt ( see Sapir-Whorf hypothesis ). Referring to the linguistic psychological interpretation of Humboldt's idea by Heymann Steinthal and Moritz Lazarus , Potebnja understood (a) under the external form of a word its sound form, (b) under the meaning of a word the totality of the ideas that a speaker connects with the respective word , and (c) under the inner form, a single one of these ideas, which enables word meanings to be conveyed. For Potebnja, the inner form was therefore a semantic characteristic of words, which explains the change in language as a permanent process of metaphorization and, moreover, justifies the knowledge of the world through the analogization of objects in the linguistic representation.

While according to Potebnja the inner forms are lost in everyday language, they are constitutive for the use of poetic language. This fact means that literature is double-coded for Potebnja. The inner forms realized in literary works - including proverbs - are what make Potebnja its poetic character and generate an additional semantic potential that goes beyond the everyday meaning of the words used in a literary work and establishes the literary character by creating a connection created by semantic units of the work that are usually not noticed in everyday use of the language.

Potebnja's concept of inner form was the direct inspiration for the alienation theory of the formalist Viktor Shklowski . Even so, the formalists soon denied their commitment to Potebnja's theory. They severed the connection to tradition by dissolving the alliance of epistemic and aesthetic function of language in the context of literary studies, which was still a matter of course for Potebnja, and no longer saw poeticity as a property of language in general, but as that aspect of literary works that is the subject of literary studies (without thereby fundamentally denying other of its aspects). Seen in this way, poeticity defined the subject area of ​​literary studies for the Russian formalists. For them, this consisted mainly of external forms. However, they tacitly preserved Potebnja's legacy insofar as he already understood poeticism as an aesthetic property of language.

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. AA Potebnja: Mysl 'i jazyk (1862). In: Ders .: Slovo i mif. Moscow 1989, pp. 17-200.
  2. ↑ See texts of the Russian formalists, 2 vol. Ed. Jurij Striedter u. Wolf-Dieter stamp. Munich 1969 a. 1972.
  3. ↑ Roman Jakobson: The Latest Russian Poetry (1921). In: Texts of the Russian Formalists, Vol. 2. Ed. Wolf-Dieter stamp. Munich 1972, pp. 18-135, here: p. 31 and 67.
  4. ↑ See Daniel Laferrière: Potebnja, Šklovskij, and the Familiarity / Strangeness Paradox. In: Russian Literature 4 (1976), pp. 175-198.