DESIGN JAKO LITERÁRNĚVĚDNÝ POJEM?

• Authors: Pavel Janoušek

Title variants

EN

Design as a literary concept?

• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

EN

In relation to his book Černá kočka aneb Subjekt znalce v myšlení o literatuře a jeho komunikační strategie (A Black Cat or The Subject of the Expert in Literary Thinking and His Communication Strategies, Praha, Academia 2012), the writer of the article suggests incorporating design as a concept into literary thinking. He builds his opinion on the fact that literary scientific speeches are not only meant to communicate ideas and contents but also to present and represent the speaker in front of the literary scientific community. Literary experts therefore naturally need to consider what they say as well as how they say it: to find means of expression which will be regarded by the potential recipients as appropriate or even progressive. It is true that the term design, which denotes this speech function, places accent on the uniqueness of an individual speech but it reflects also a collective conformity because it counts on mechanisms of identification, automatization and embellishment. If it was recognized, the term would make it possible to analyse a number of literary text features ranging from the choice of the subject, genre and appropriate language to terminology, citation method as well as the choice of the ideas and the people that the speaker makes references to as those who he/she respects or challenges. There also appears a possibility to characterize the design of individual literary schools, methodologies and approaches. In this context the writer himself defines three essential types of literary design, which he names traditional or naive design, methodological design and conceptual design. His focus of attention is on detailed characteristics of the mentioned designs and the ways they have developed in literary thinking in the course of time, and they overlap with current literary scientific practice. And no matter how these types have related to each other in history, the writer holds the opinion that in the future their conscious coexistence will be necessary and useful because that is what creates space for grasping such an unintelligible and complex thing like literature.

Keywords

EN

LITERARY THINKING; LITERARY SCIENCE; LITERARY HISTORY; LITERARY THEORY; EXPERT; LITERARY DESIGN; CONCEPTUAL LITERARY SCIENCE

• Publisher: Institute of Slovak Literature, Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Slovenská literatúra (Slovak Literature)
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 61
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 160 – 170

Contributors

author

Pavel Janoušek

• Ústav pro českou literaturu AV ČR, Na Florenci 3/1420, 110 00 Praha 1, Czech Republic