Roman Jakobson

Basic Questions 1.What are the basic functions of language in communication? What is the poetic function? Where do we see poetic functions in daily language? 2.Is there a common semantic operation in sentence-making and the making of poems, films, and the other cultural languages? 3.How do Jacobson’s views of poetic language compliment the structuralist narratology of Todorov?

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: 沒事找茶；茶言觀色；茶號台 Commercial slogan: 我愛大自然 鬧鐘 鬧人不鬧鬼 醫生 醫活不醫死 學校 學好不學壞  equivalence --homonyms, puns, parallel structures, and rhymes.  creating (metaphoric) connotations or ambiguities;

Language/Literature as an enclosed system with two Axes Combination (the syntagmatic pole) (sentence; functions; mytonymy ) Selection (the paradigmatic pole) Mythemes, actants, metaphors, etc.

Roman Jakobson’s 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

From Aphasia to poetry metaphor – substitution of one with something similar –poetry –Romanticism/Symbolism How about narrative poems? e.g. 木蘭辭、 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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

e.g. (2) Picasso vs. Margritte Nature Morte by Pablo Picasso

e.g. (2) Picasso vs. Margritte The Treachery of Images, by Rene Magritte, 1928/29