Roman Jakobson

University of Jordan
Department of English language
literature
Summer course (2020): modern critics
Instructor: Dr.Zaidoun EL Shara

Presentation by
F.Z KHELIFI

11/08/2020
Russian Formalism: overview

It is a kind criticism that aims:

- to explore what is specifically literary in texts

- Reject the limp spirituality of late Romantic poetics in favour of a detailed
and empirical approach to reading.
- in other words, the formalists were much more interested in ‘method’,
much more concerned to establish a ‘scientific’ basis for the theory of
literature.

Russian Formalists aimed rather to outline models and hypotheses (in a

scientific spirit) to explain how aesthetic effects are produced by literary
devices, and how the ‘literary’ distinguished from and related to the ‘extra-
literary’
Roman Osipovich Jakobson was a Russian–American linguist
and literary theorist. As a pioneer of the structural analysis of
language, which became the dominant trend in linguistics during
the first half of the 20th century, Jakobson was among the most
influential linguists of the century.
Metaphor is what happens when one sign is placed as the substitute for
another sign because they are seen as somehow similar to one another. For
example, colour red and shy or anger: we might use the metaphoric value of
colour red to describe how shy /anger someone else is.

Metonymy is what happens when one sign is placed as the substitution for
another sign because they are associated with one another. For example, “The
pen is mightier than the sword.” (Pen refers to written words, and sword to
military force.)
In his 1956 essay, Two Aspects of Language and-Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances,

Jakobson argues that poetry is metaphoric, in that, it focuses on signs and on the

principle of similarity, while prose is metonymic, as it focuses on the referent and is

based on contiguity Jakobson notes that in literary Romanticism and Symbolism,

metaphor has been widely used, while metonymy has been predominant in Realism.

-Terry Eagleton gives the example of different literary styles that make use of each of

these kinds of figurative language. While realist prose writing might use more

metonymy by connecting signs that are associated with one another, something like

Romantic poetry would be much more highly metaphorical.

 Examples from Cootzee’s Disgrace and Waiting for the
Barbarians

Metonymy in Disgrace
Sex as metonymy for domination of blacks in case of Lucy’s rape as it refers
to the shame and humiliation in case of David and Melanie relationship.

Metaphor in disgrace
“In Soraya's arms he becomes, fleetingly, their father: foster-father, step-
father, shadow-father”

“Glances that would once have responded to his slid over, past, through him.
Overnight he became a ghost”
Metonymy in WB

Colonel Joll's black glasses

“Two little discs of glass suspended in front of his eyes in loops of wire”

"His tapering fingernails, his mauve handkerchiefs, his slender feet in soft shoes...“

Metaphor in WB

-The barbarian girl’s scarsand her broken ankles as crippling of her people:
The crippling of the barbarian girl represents the crippling of her people.

- The barbarian girl metaphorically represents “the conquered land”.

References
Eagleton, Terry. "Chapter 3, Structuralism and Semiotics." Literary Theory: An
Introduction. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008. 79-109.
Jakobson, “Roman. From Linguistics and Poetics”.Norton Anthology of Theory &
Criticism (1st Edition). Eds. Vincent B. Leitch, et. al. New York: W.W. Norton & Co,
2001. 1258-1265.
Thank You for your
Attention