Roman Jakobson

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Roman Jakobson

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Basic Questions

• What are the basic functions of language in
  communication?  What is the poetic function?
  Where do we see poetic functions in daily
  language?
• Is there a common semantic operation in
  sentence-making and the making of poems, films,
  and the other cultural languages?
• How do Jacobsons views of poetic language
  compliment the structuralist narratology of
  Todorov?

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Examples of poetic function

• Jocobson The poetic function projects the
  principle of equivalence from the asix of
  selection into the axis of combination.
• Store names ???????????
• Commercial slogan ?????
• ?? ?????
• ?? ?????
• ?? ?????
• ? equivalence --homonyms, puns, parallel
  structures, and rhymes.
• ? creating (metaphoric) connotations or
  ambiguities

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Language/Literature as an enclosed system with
two Axes

• Combination(the syntagmatic pole)
• (sentence functions
• mytonymy )

Selection (the paradigmatic pole)
Mythemes,actants, metaphors, etc.
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Roman Jakobsons studies of aphasia

• Similarity disorder inability to deal with
  associative relationships in language.
• Contiguity disorder inability to organize words
  into higher units (e.g. sentence).
• ? Arts? The example of Gleb Ivannovic

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From Aphasia to poetry

• metaphor substitution of one with something
  similar poetry Romanticism/Symbolism
• How about narrative poems? e.g. ????Ode on
  Nightingale, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
• metonymy replacement of one with something
  close by
• -- novel Realism
• Is this distinction true to all the texts in
  these movements?

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e.g. (1) To Autumn

• Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
• Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun
• Conspiring with him how to load and bless
• With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves
  run
• To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
• And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core
• To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
• With a sweet kernel to set budding more,
• And still more, later flowers for the bees,
• Until they think warm days will never cease,
• For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

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Sailing to Byzantium W.B. Yeats (green-
nature/time, brown -art)

• That is no country for old men. The young
• In one another's arms, birds in the trees -
• Those dying generations - at their song,
• The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
• Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
• Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
• Caught in that sensual music all neglect
• Monuments of unageing intellect.

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Sailing to Byzantium (2)

• An aged man is but a paltry thing,
• A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
• Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
• For every tatter in its mortal dress,
• Nor is there singing school but studying
• Monuments of its own magnificence
• And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
• To the holy city of Byzantium.

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Sailing to Byzantium (3)

• O sages standing in God's holy fire
• As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
• Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
• And be the singing-masters of my soul.
• Consume my heart away sick with desire
• And fastened to a dying animal
• It knows not what it is and gather me
• Into the artifice of eternity.

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Sailing to Byzantium (4)

• Once out of nature I shall never take
• My bodily form from any natural thing,
• But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
• Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
• To keep a drowsy Emperor awake
• Or set upon a golden bough to sing
• To lords and ladies of Byzantium
• Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

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e.g. (2) Picasso vs. Margritte

• Nature Morte
• by Pablo Picasso

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e.g. (2) Picasso vs. Margritte

• The Treachery of Images, by Rene Magritte,
  1928/29