The essay focuses on a critical analysis of Jan Mukarovsky's 'Aesthetic Function, Norm and Value as Social Facts' (1936). This key work of Mukarovky's, frequently referred to, has substantially influenced Structuralism in literary studies all over the world. The critical analysis of some aspects of this work demonstrates that despite its clearly having inspirational qualities the article manifests some methodological and systemic shortcomings, which somewhat hinder its overall contribution to literary studies.
The article discusses concrete theoretical explications and practical applications of research in the area of the history of literature (mainly works of Jan Mukarovský and Felix Vodicka), which were connected with theme of development and historical aspects of literature.
The study analyses a narrative monologue, an inner monologue, and a monologue which includes a dialogue between the author (implied author, narrator) and the reader/spectator, from the point of view of the recipient's participation in the narrative. It employs Mukarovsky's analysis of what extent a monologue is present in every dialogue as well as latent and sometimes manifest dialogue features present in every monologue, along with the side-participation of hearer/spectator. The notion of side-participation is expanded on the triangular model of attention with continual presence of ego-consciousness. Thus every monologue has a side-participant who consequently holds a conversation with himself, especially in the case of an aesthetic attitude. Each member of a communicative situation embodies three roles: those of a speaker, a hearer and a side-participant.
This essay is focused on the phenomenological qualification not only - as demonstrated by Elmar Holenstein in particular - of linguistic aspects of the Prague School, but also its literary-studies aspects. One must also take into account the transcendental result of a given impulse, of the determining status of the opposite transcendental gestures of an artistic text. It is useful in this connection to imagine the shifts in the composition of the 'artistic situation', which arise from Mukarovsky's 1943 distinction between the work-thing and the work-sign.
This paper considers the structure of history as conceived by the Prague School, seeks to show the evolution of the conception, and stresses that ways in which it may be useful in the current theoretical discussion on historiography. Its central concept is sense and the way in which sense is determined. It views sense as a structural category, and therefore focuses on how sense is generated. This question is therefore of key importance, whether sense is understood as intentionality, potentiality, or eventuality. In this context, the Prague School also considers the frequently reiterated view that to understand the sense of an event (for example, a battle, the French Revolution, or Dumas's Three Musketeers), it is necessary to activate the original context, which the given event is the product of. But is this context accessible to us? And in what form, then, is the sense of the event accessible to us? With this discovery, part of modern historiography tends to be sceptical about what man can know: 'the history we write is always, without exception, invented'. But is it not sense itself, as a structural category, which could lead us out of this scepticism? It clearly, however, must be the kind of sense whose structure is capable of conceiving both intention and chance. To what context, then, does sense belong?
The essay outlines a non-substantialist ontological conception of the work of art, which should grasp the process-like nature of the works of visual art. This process-like ontological model of the work of art draws on following conceptions: (a) the conception of the work of art as an experience in J. Dewey; (b) the conception of the virtual and actual existences as developed in informatics; (c) the conception of a semantic gesture of Jan Mukarovsky. In this conception the work of art is seen as a product created by the author/authors together with the viewer/viewers, as an experience, which could be shared inter-subjectively. The whole process is controlled by the semantic gesture, which is unique in each work of art, and which is our guide in actual experience.
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