The Word and Verbal Art: Selected Essays (Yale Russian & East European Studies) - Hardcover

Jan Mukarovsky

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300015739 ISBN 13: 9780300015737

Publisher: Yale University Press, 1977

Synopsis

The Czech critic Jan Mukarovsky (1891-1975 ) has been called the father of structural esthetics; yet few of his writings have been available in English. Here, eleven essays on literature, written between 1933 and 1946, are offered under a title recalling the Prague Linguistic Circle's journal Slovo a slovesnost, of which Mukarovsky was an editor. The volume opens with a comprehensive essay, "On Poetic Language," in which Mukarovsky outlines the basic tenets of the structural study of poetic language. The next four essays explore further aspects of poetic language and the language of the theater. The remaining essays reveal other fundamental concerns in Mukafovsky's approach to literature: the differences between prose and poetry; the relationship between the Prague Structuralists and the Russian Formalists; the personality of the author; and the interrelations among the arts. Mukafovsky's theories are of particular relevance now that Structuralism is expanding internationally throughout the disciplines. This representative selection of his writings provides access to one of the earliest and still most significant attempts at a structuralist theory of literature. Mukafovsky's program offers a balanced, rational, and philosophically well-founded example to students of literary theory and criticism. John Burbank, assistant headmaster of the Harvey School, Katonah, New York, has translated Roman Jakobson's Czech writings on Pushkin. Peter Steiner is assistant professor of Slavic languages and literatures at the University of Michigan.

About this title

Language Notes:

Text: English, Czech (translation)

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 1977
• ISBN 10: 0300015739
• ISBN 13: 9780300015737
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 238