Background
Roman Osipovich Jakobson was born on October 11, 1896, in Moscow, Russia, to a well-to-do family of Jewish descent.
( Verbal Art, Verbal Sign, Verbal Time was first publishe...)
Verbal Art, Verbal Sign, Verbal Time was first published in 1985. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. Roman Jakobson, one of the most important thinkers of our century, was bet known for his role in the rise and spread of the structural approach to linguistics and literature. His formative structuralism approach to linguistics and literature. His formative years with the Russian Futurists and subsequent involvement in the Moscow and Prague Linguistic Circles (which he co-founded) resulted in a lifelong devotion to fundamental change in both literary theory and linguistics. In bringing each to bear upon the other, he enlivened both disciplines; if a literary work was to a him a linguistic fact, it was also a semiotic phenomenon - part of the entire universe of signs; and above all, for both language and literature, time was an integral factor, one that produced momentum and change. Jakobson's books and articles, written in many languages and published around the world, were collected in a monumental seven-volume work, Selected Writings (1962 -1984), which has been available only to a limited readership. Not long before his death in 1982, Jakobson brought together this group of eleven essaysVerbal Art, Verbal Sign, Verbal Time to serve as an introduction to some of his linguistic theories and especially, to his work in poetics. Jakobson's introductory article and the editor's preface together suggest the range of his work and provide a context for the essays in this book, which fall into three groups. Those in the first section reflect his preoccupation with the dynamic role of time in language and society. Jakobson challenges Saussure's rigid distinction between language as a static (synchronic) system and its historical (diachronic) development - a false opposition, in his view, since it ignores the role of time in the present moment of language. The essays on time counter the notion that structuralism itself, as heir to Saussure's work, has discarded history; in Jakabson's hands, we see a struggle to integrate the two modes. In central group essays, on poetic theory, he shows how the grammatical categories of everyday speech become the expressive, highly charged language of poetry. These essays also deal with the related issues of subliminal and intentional linguistic patterns of poetry. These essays also deal with the related issues of subliminal and intentional linguistic patterns in poetryareas that are problematic in structural analysisand provide exemplary readings of Pushkin and Yeats. The last essays, on Mayakovsky and Holderlin, make clear that Jakobson was aware of the essential (and in these instances, tragic) bond between a poet's life and art. The book closes with essays by Linda Waugh, Krystyna Pomorska, and Igor Melchuk that provide a thoughtful perspective on Jakobson's work as a whole.
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( "Roman Jakobson was one of the great minds of the moder...)
"Roman Jakobson was one of the great minds of the modern world," Edward J. Brown has written, "and the effects of his genius have been felt in many fields: linguistics, semiotics, art, structural anthropology, and, of course, literature." At every stage in his odyssey from Moscow to Prague to Denmark and then to the United States, he formed collaborative efforts that changed the very nature of each discipline he touched. This book is the first comprehensive presentation in English of Jakobson's major essays on the intertwining of language and literature: here the reader will learn how it was that Jakobson became legendary. Jakobson reveals himself as one of the great explorers of literary art in our day--a critic who revealed the avant-garde thrust of even the most worked-over poets, such as Shakespeare and Pushkin, and enabled the reader to see them as the innovators they were. Jakobson takes the reader from literature to grammar and then back again, letting points of structural detail throw a sharp light on the underlying form and linking thereby the most disparate realms into a coherent whole. In his essays we can also learn to appreciate his search for a fully systematic, nonmetaphysical understanding of the workings of literature: Jakobson made possible a deep structural analysis that did not exist before. Among the essential items in this collection are such classics as "Linguistics and Poetics" and "On a Generation That Squandered Its Poets" and illuminations of Baudelaire, Yeats, Turgenev, Pasternak, and Blake, as well as the famous pieces on Shakespeare and Pushkin. The essays include fundamental theoretical statements, structural analyses of individual poems, explorations of the connections between poetry and experience, and semiotic perspectives on the structure of verbal and nonverbal art. This will become a basic book for contemplating the function of language in literature--a project that will continue to engross the keenest readers.
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("Jakobson and Halle's initial statement of the principles...)
"Jakobson and Halle's initial statement of the principles of linguistic organization should be made available to all future generations of linguists. It builds a solid foundation for Saussurean thinking about linguisic oppositions and establishes distinctive feature theory as the basis of their formal treatment." Prof. Dr. William Labov, University of Pennsylvania, Department of Linguistics
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(From the Preface: With this volume, Michigan Studies in t...)
From the Preface: With this volume, Michigan Studies in the Humanities inaugurates a series of books designed to promote cooperation among the various branches of the humanities by presenting perspectives on traditional problems of interpretation and evaluation. Though written by scholars firmly grounded in their special fields, these works will attempt to reach a wider audience by acknowledging problems confronted by the many branches of humanistic endeavor. At a time when scholars seem to speak to a narrower and narrower audience, it becomes essential that the common framework of humanistic investigation must be reasserted. We believe that the specialization and fragmentation of our field can be transcended and, without the trivializing effects of popularization, a sense of shared purpose can invigorate separate investigations and create a context for unified understanding of human creativity and imagination.
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(Memoir. Cultural Writing. Roman Jakobson was a founder of...)
Memoir. Cultural Writing. Roman Jakobson was a founder of two of the most influential schools of 20th century literary thought: Russian Formalism and Structuralism Jakobson's rare sensibility in his explorations of language and art are no more evident than in this volume, detailing the formative moment in his public and personal life. Along with the moving recollections of his friendships with such Modernist figures as Majokovskij, Xlebnikov, and Malevich, the book incliudes Jakobson's letters to other futurists active in the scene and to his close friend Elsa Brik, later to gain noteriety as the french writer Elsa Triolet and wife of the poet Louis Aragon. Translated byStephen Rudy. Edited by Bengt Jangfeldt. 16 black & white plates.
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( One measure of Roman Jakobson's towering role in lingu...)
One measure of Roman Jakobson's towering role in linguistics is that his work has defined the field itself. Jakobson's contributions have now become a permanent part of American and European views on language. With his uncanny ability to survive devastating uprooting again and again--from Moscow to Prague to Upsalla to New York and finally to Cambridge--Jakobson was able to bring to each milieu new and stimulating ideas, which have broadened the perspective of linguistics while giving it new direction and specifying its domain. Linda Waugh and Monique Monville-Burston have assembled an intellectual overview of his work in linguistics from partial and complete works that they have arranged, introduced, and cross-referenced. Some appear here in print for the first time, others are newly translated into English. More than a convenient access to Jakobson's basic works, On Language presents a broad profile of the polymathic general linguist who suggested radical innovations in every area of linguistic theory. The breadth of Jakobson's engagement in linguistics is captured by the editors' informative introduction and by their perspicacious presentation of topics. His general view of the science of linguistics is followed by his stunning contributions to linguistic metatheory in the areas of structure and function. Various aspects of historical, typological, and sociolinguistics are also explored along with his phonological theory--perhaps his most influential contribution--and his views on grammatical semantics. A topic that increasingly preoccupied Jakobson in his later career, the interrelationship between sound and meaning, is presented here in detail. The concluding three essays focus on the various relations between linguistics and the human and natural sciences, which led Jakobson ultimately to be characterized as an interdisciplinary thinker.
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Roman Osipovich Jakobson was born on October 11, 1896, in Moscow, Russia, to a well-to-do family of Jewish descent.
Roman Jakobson studied at the Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages and then at the Historical-Philological Faculty of Moscow University. In 1918, Jakobson received a master's degree from Moscow University.
In 1920, Jakobson left Moscow for Prague. He arrived as translator for the first Soviet Red Cross Mission to Czechoslovakia and remained in Czechoslovakia until the Nazi occupation in 1939. On October 6, 1926, Prague Linguistic Circle was founded by Jakobson as its Vice-President.
In 1928, he attended the First International Congress of Linguists, The Hague. In 1929, Jakobson also attended the First International Congress of Slavic Philologists, Prague. The same year, he began work as head of the East Slavic section (Ostslavisches Referat) of the journal Slavische Rundschau. In 1930, he received his Ph. D. from Charles University.
Late 1931, Jakobson moved from Prague to Brno. In 1932, he attended the International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Amsterdam. The following year, he attended the Third International Congress of Linguists, Rome. In 1933-1934, he became Assistant Professor at Masaryk University in Brno. On April 29, 1935, he lectured on "Poetry of the Hussite Period" in the Prague Linguistic Circle. Later he attended the Fourth International Congress of Linguists, Copenhagen. In 1937-1939, he became Associate Professor of Russian Philology and Old Czech Literature at Masaryk University. On March 21, 1938, Jakobson lectured on the fundamentals of phonological analysis, Prague Linguistic Circle. In 1939, he abandons Brno after the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia and hides in Prague while awaiting exit visas.
On April 21, 1939, Jakobson arrives in Denmark and visiting professor at the University of Copenhagen. Also he works with the Copenhagen Linguistic Circle. In early September, he leaves Denmark for Norway and in 1940 walked across the border to Sweden, where he continued his work at the Karolinska Hospital. When Swedish colleagues feared a possible German occupation, he managed to leave on a cargo ship to New York City in 1941 to become part of the wider community of intellectual émigrés who fled there.
On June 4, 1941, he arrived in the United States at New York harbor. In 1942, he was appointed to the Faculté des Lettres, École Libre des Hautes Études, New York, as Professor of General Linguistics, and to the Institut de Philologie et d'Histoire Orientale et Slave as Professor of Slavic Philology, he taught there 1942-1946. In 1943-1946, he was visiting Professor of Linguistics, Columbia University. In 1946, Jakobson was appointed to newly formed Thomas G. Masaryk Chair of Czechoslovak Studies, Columbia University, which he occupied until 1949. In 1949, he appointed Samuel Hazzard Cross Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures and of General Linguistics, Harvard University. In 1957, he was concurrently appointed visiting Institute Professor, MIT and reappointed visiting Institute Professor for a six month period beginning July 1958. He continued in his role at MIT until becoming emeritus in 1970, a position held concurrently with his Harvard chair until he became emeritus at Harvard in 1965.
Roman Jakobson died on July 18, 1982, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
(From the Preface: With this volume, Michigan Studies in t...)
( One measure of Roman Jakobson's towering role in lingu...)
( "Roman Jakobson was one of the great minds of the moder...)
( Verbal Art, Verbal Sign, Verbal Time was first publishe...)
(Preface by C. Levi-Strauss)
(Memoir. Cultural Writing. Roman Jakobson was a founder of...)
("Jakobson and Halle's initial statement of the principles...)
Quotations:
Speech sounds cannot be understood, delimited, classified and explained except in the light of the tasks which they perform in language.
From a strictly articulatory point of view there is no succession of sounds.
Of course, we have known for a long time that a word, like any verbal sign, is a unity of two components.
In 1922, Roman Jakobson married Sofya Nikolaevna Feldman, but later they divorced. In 1935, he married Svatava Pírková, they alsi divorced. His third marriage was in 1962 with Krystyna Pomorska.