¹ Saussure, Cours de linguistique générale (Paris: Payot, 1916). For an English translation, see Course in General Linguistics, trans. Wade Baskin (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966).

² Prague structuralism should properly be called functional structuralism, to distinguish it from the versions of the Geneva and the Copenhagen schools. In fact, Vilém Mathesius, chairman of the Prague Linguistic Circle, preferred the designation “functional linguistics.” See his essays “New Currents and Tendencies in Linguistic Research,” Mnema (Prague: Jednota ceskych filologu, 1927), pp. 188–203; “Ziele und Aufgaben der vergleichenden Phonologie,” Xenia Pragensia (Prague: Jednota ceskoslovenskych matematikû a fysikû, 1929), pp. 432–45; and “La Place de la linguistique fonctionelle et structurale dans le développement général des études linguistiques,” Casopis pro moderni filologii, 18 (1931), 1–7. Mathesius' pupil Josef Vachek also produced articles for foreign audiences: “What Is Phonology?” English Studies, 15 (1933), 81–92, and “Several Thoughts on Several Statements of Phoneme Theory,” American Speech, 10 (1935), 243–55. Consult also N. S. Trubetzkoy's “La Phonologie actuelle,” Journal de Psychologie, 30 (1933), 227–46, perhaps the most telling statement of the Prague School's position. In recent years, however, the term “function,” like “structure,” has been much abused by being applied indiscriminately to disparate concepts. Jakobson now advocates a more descriptive label for the Prague School linguistics, namely, “the means-ends model”; see his “Efforts toward a Means-Ends Model of Language in Interwar Continental Linguistics,” in Word and Language, Vol. ii of Selected Writings (The Hague: Mouton, 1971), pp. 522–26.

³ See the following articles and monographs: “O hlâskoslovném zâkonu a teleologickém hlâskoslovi,” Casopis pro moderni filologii, 14 (1928), 183–84; Remarques sur l'évolution phonologique du russe comparée à celle des autres langues slaves, Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague (hereafter cited as Travaux), 2 (1929); and “Prinzipien der historischen Phonologie,” Travaux, 4 (1931), 247–67. A translation of the Czech piece, “The Concept of the Sound Law and the Teleological Criterion,” can be found, together with a reprint of the French monograph, in Jakobson's Phonological Studies, Vol. I of Selected Writings (The Hague: Mouton, 1962), pp. 1–2, 7–116. A translation of the German essay, “Principles of Historical Phonology,” is in A Reader in Historical and Comparative Linguistics, ed. Allen R. Keiler (New York: Holt, 1972), pp. 121–38. For an account of the historical sound mutations in Germanic languages, one might consult William G. Moulton, “Types of Phonemic Change,” To Honor Roman Jakobson: Essays on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday (The Hague: Mouton, 1967), pp. 1393–1407.

This methodological concentration on the phonic stratum of language, supposedly at the expense of the written, has lately come under attack by Jacques Derrida as an example of the fallacious metaphysics of presence. The Copenhagen School, by contrast, is deemed not guilty because it denies the primacy of speech over writing—a view that Derrida claims has yielded path-breaking studies of literature. Derrida cites two such studies—and indeed there are only two, both having the character and scope of preliminary sketches. A quick comparison with the critical and theoretical output of the Prague School, English translations of which are cited below, reveals that Derrida's charge is misdirected or, more likely, misguided in principle. See “Linguistique et grammatologie,” De la grammatologie (Paris: Minuit, 1967), esp. pp. 86–87; the English version is Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1977), pp. 58–59. Moreover, judging from a passing reference to Opojaz (the Petersburg Society for the Study of Poetic Language) as a critical school that could adequately tackle poetry, which by definition highlights the sound structure of language, but not prose, one gathers that Derrida mistakes the formal method for the method of the so-called Ohrenphilologie. “Acoustic philology” did in fact influence the formalist research in its initial stages but soon came under sharp criticism (e.g., in Viktor Vinogradov's critique of Boris Eichenbaum's essay on Gogol's “Overcoat”; see “Problema skaza v stilistike” The Problem of “Skaz” in Stylistics,' Poetika, 1 [1926], 24–40).

⁴ “Du dualisme asymétrique du signe linguistique,” Travaux, 1 (1929), 88–93. Karcevskij, a pupil of Saussure's who brought his mentor's teachings to Russia in 1917 and became, in the 1920s, a member of both the Prague and Geneva Schools, is a seldom mentioned figure in current linguistic discussion. For an overview of his career see. S. Pospelov, “O lingvisticeskom nasledstve S. Karcevskogo” ‘The Linguistic Legacy of S. Karcevskij,‘ Voprosy jazykoznanija, 6 (1957), 4656, and Wendy Steiner, “Language as Process: Sergej Karcevskij's Semiotics of Language,” Sound, Sign and Meaning: Quinquagenary of the Prague Linguistic Circle, ed. Ladislav Matejka, Michigan Slavic Contributions, No. 6 (Ann Arbor: Dept. of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Univ. of Michigan, 1976), pp. 291300.

⁵ Cf. “Thèses,” Travaux, 1 (1929), esp. pp. 17–21. The opposition between practical and poetic languages was first postulated by Russian linguist L. P. Jakubinskij in “O zvukach stichotvornogo jazyka” On the Sound Makeup of Poetic Language,‘ Poetika: Sborniki po teorii poeticeskogo jazyka (Saint Petersburg: Opojaz, 1919), p. 37. This goes to show how intimate the ties were, in the late twenties and early thirties, between the Petersburg and Prague groups. The Prague Circle's “Thèses,” in point of fact, restates the crucial concepts of Jakobson and Tynjanov's declaration of principles, “Problemy izucenija literatury i jazyka,” Novyj lef, 2 (1928), 35–37; an English version is “Problems in the Study of Literature and Language,” trans. Herbert Eagle, in Readings in Russian Poetics: Formalist and Structuralist Views, ed. Ladislav Matejka and Krystyna Pomorska (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1971). pp. 79–81. I attempted a comparison of the two theoretical manifestoes in “From Petersburg Formalism to Prague Structuralism: The 1928 and 1929 Theses,” a paper read at the NEMLA meeting in Pittsburgh, April 1977. If further proof of the formalists’ influence and collaboration were needed, one could point to Tynjanov's lecture “The Problem of Literary Evolution,” read to the Prague Circle in December 1928 (see the related paper “On Literary Evolution,” in Readings in Russian Poetics, pp. 66–78), and to Boris Tomasevskij's lecture of the same year, “La Nouvelle Ecole d'histoire littéraire en Russie,” published in Revue des Etudes Slaves, 8 (1928), 22640. Since the thrust of the present essay is theoretical, not historical, I can do no more than mention the major points of contact between the two groups and allude to major analogies in Western criticism, as I do in my title, which echoes Claudio Guillen's Literature as System: Essays toward the Theory of Literary History (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press. 1971). I offer a fuller account of the place of Prague structuralism vis-à-vis rival theoretical movements in a larger study entitled “Historic Structures: The Prague School Semiotic Theory of Literary History, 1923–1948” (in preparation).

⁶ Cf. “Thèses,” p. 21. Jakobson first formulated this notion of poetic function in his book Novejsaja russkaja poezija (Nabrosok pervyj): Velemir Chlebnikov (Prague: Politika, 1921), p. 10; the English version is “Modern Russian Poetry: Velemir Khlebnikov (Excerpts),” Major Soviet Writers: Essays in Criticism, ed. and trans. Edward J. Brown (New York: Oxford Univ. Press. 1973), p. 62. It has gained currency in contemporary criticism when defined as the “set (Einstellung) toward the MESSAGE as such, focus on the message for its own sake,” in Jakobson's “Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics,” Style in Language, ed. Thomas A. Sebeok (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1960), p. 356.

⁷ See “Chaplin ve Svetlech velkomesta. (Pokus ? strukturni rozbor hereckého zjevu),” Liteniini noviny, 5 (1930–31), 2–3; an English version is “An Attempt at a Structural Analysis of a Dramatic Figure,” Structure, Sign, and Function: Selected Essays by Jan Mukafovsky, trans, and ed. John Burbank and Peter Steiner (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1978), pp. 171–77.

⁸ In a fine study of Chaplin's movie, Walter Kerr discovers that “City Lights may also be read as a structural exercise” and goes on to interpret it, as if to confirm Mukafovsky's analysis, as an “utterly stable film about total instability” (The Silent Clowns [New York: Knopf, 1975], pp. 346, 352).

⁹ See Mukafovsky, “Estetickâ funkce a estetickâ norma jako sociâlni fakty,” Socialni problémy, 4 (1935), esp. pp. 33–36. An expanded version of this study is reprinted in Mukarovsky's Studie ? estetiky ‘Studies in Aesthetics’ (Prague: Odeon, 1966), pp. 1754; an English version is Aesthetic Function, Norm and Value as Social Facts, trans. Mark E. Suino, Michigan Slavic Contributions, No. 3 (Ann Arbor: Dept. of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Univ. of Michigan, 1970). One may also consult Mukarovsky's communication “La norme esthétique,” Travaux du IXe Congrès International de Philosophie, 12, Pt. 3, ed. Raymond Bayer (Paris: Hermann, 1937), 72–79; trans, as “The Aesthetic Norm,” in Structure, Sign, and Function, pp. 49–56.

¹⁰ Mukafovsky, “L'Art comme fait sémiologique,” Actes du Huitième Congrès International du Philosophie à Prague 2–7 Septembre 1934, ed. Emanuel Râdl and Zdenëk Smetâcek (Prague: Organizacni komitét kongresu, 1936), pp. 1065–72. My translation. Ail subsequent quotations are also my translations from this text. Together with Jakobson's lecture “Co je poésie?” Volné smëry, 30 (1933–34), 229–39, this is one of the first attempts at a semiotic theory of art, preceded, to my knowledge, only by the work of I. A. Richards and C. K. Ogden, The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of Language upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism (London: Kegan Paul, 1923). Both Mukafovsky's and Jakobson's papers can now be found in English: “Art as Semiotic Fact” and “What Is Poetry?” Semiotics of Art: Prague School Contributions, ed. Ladislav Matejka and Irwin R. Titunik (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1976), pp. 3–9, 164–75.

The problem of the universality of art is one of the perennial issues in art theory, and a further discussion of it would go beyond the scope of this article. Let me only mention Aristotle's assertion that poetry is more philosophical and universal than history (Poetics 1451b). For a more recent account see W. K. Wimsatt's survey “The Concrete Universal,” The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry (Lexington: Univ. of Kentucky Press, 1954), pp. 69–83.

¹¹ Mukafovsky, “Polâkova Vznesenost pfirody. Pokus ? rozbor a vyvojové zaîadëni bâsnické struktury” ‘Polâk's Sublimity of Nature: An Attempt at an Analysis and Historical Classification of a Poetic Structure,’ Kapitoly ? ceské poetiky ‘Chapters in Czech Poetics,’ iii (1934; rpt. Prague: Svoboda, 1948), 166–67. My translation.

¹² The history of the reception of literary works has been studied by Mukafovsky's pupil Felix Vodicka. Vodicka's collection of essays, Struktura vyvoje (Prague: Odeon, 1969), exists in German as Die Entwicklung der Struktur, ed. Frank Boldt (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1975). See Jurij Striedter's preface, esp. the second part, “Zu Felix Vodiëkas Théorie der ‘Konkretisation’ als Teil einer strukturalistischen Literaturgeschichte.” pp. lixciii, and my essay “Toward a Structural Literary History: The Contribution of Felix Vodicka,” Sound, Sign and Meaning, pp. 456–76.

¹³ The efforts to solve the problem of change and identity, of variants and universale, go back at least to Plato, as witnessed, for instance, by Socrates' queries in Cratylus (473e). The dynamic notion of structure as energeia, capable of preserving its identity even while individual structural relationships are open to constant regrouping, sets off the Prague School conception from the more static holistic concepts, such as organic, compositional and Gestalt wholes or configurations. See, in particular, Mukafovsky's discussion in “Pojem celku v teorii umëni” (1945), Estetika, 5 (1968), 173–81; trans, as “The Concept of the Whole in the Theory of Art,” Structure, Sign, and Function, pp. 70–81.

¹⁴ Mukafovsky, “Replika” ‘Reply (to my critics),‘ Slovo a slovesnost, 1 (1935), 191. My translation. Mukafovsky's attempt at a “historical analysis of a poetic structure” became the hub of a heated polemic regarding structural analysis. One of the participants was René Wellek, then a junior member of the Circle. Out of that debate came the impetus for Wellek's essay “The Theory of Literary History,” Travaux, 6 (1936), 173–92, parts of which were later incorporated into two chapters of his Theory of Literature, “The Analysis of the Literary Work of Art” and “Literary History” (New York: Harcourt, 1949), pp. 139–58, 263–82. In addition, it is worth noting that the concept of “structure of structures” has recently been investigated by Soviet semioticians from the Tartu group: see B. A. Uspenskij, V. V. Ivanov, V. N. Toporov, A. M. Pjatigorskij, Ju. M. Lotman, “Theses on the Semiotic Study of Cultures (as Applied to Slavic Texts),” Structure of Texts and Semiotics of Culture, ed. Jan van der Eng and Mojmir Grygar (The Hague: Mouton, 1973), pp. 1–28.

¹⁵ See Mukafovsky, “Individuum a literârni vyvoj” (1943), Studie ? estetiky, pp. 226–35; an English version is “The Individual and Literary Development,” The Word and Verbal Art: Selected Essays by Jan Mukafovsky, ed. and trans. John Burbank and Peter Steiner (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1977), pp. 161–79. Also consult Mukafovsky's “Osobnost v umëni” (1944), Studie ? estetiky, pp. 236–44; trans, as “Personality in Art,” Structure, Sign, and Function, pp. 150–68.