Structure, Function Symbols

For a long time, the image of Prague School has been occupied by its identity as a linguistic school, so that people to some extent despised, or even ignored its another identity as a genre of literary theory. As a genre of literary theory,the Prague School occupied a pivotal position in the history of literary theories of 20th century. It not only played a crucial part in the development of structuralism of 20th century, inherited the Russian Formalism and opened the French Structuralism, but also exerted a great influence on some other major schools in the history of literary theories of 20th century, such as Germany Reception Theory and the Soviet Union Tartu - Moscow cultural semiotics.Unfortunately, so far, the achievements,which the Prague School made in literature theory and aesthetics, are still far from being commensurate with its status of great importance, no matter at home or abroad. What causes this situation, in addition to some reasons of the school itself, probably to a large extent, are connected with different kinds of misunderstanding, misreading, which the school literary made in understanding the literary theory of this school: the crucial role,which the Prague School played in the history of structuralism to a large extent has been reduced to a transitional role, and this transition in turn is equated with lack of originality. Aiming at this inaccurate knowledge, this paper chooses Jan Mukarovsky's literary and aesthetic theory as the research object, trying to penetrate deeply the original context of the Prague School, making some carding and investigation on some basic categories, crucial conceptions and main purports in the literary theory of Jan Mukarovsky.This paper is composed of three parts: introduction, body and conclusion. Combing the studying history and current situation of the Prague School at home and abroad, the introduction part on the whole describes the value of the school and the reasons, actuality and urgency of studying it. The Body part is divided into seven chapters: the first chapter introduces the biography of Mukarovsky, the sources and development of his thoughts. The second chapter, from the methodological level, the general (abstract) level as well as the specific level (the study of literature) studies the meaning of"structure"in Mukarovsky's literary theory. The third chapter, through the comparison of the functional view of Russian Formalism and Mukarovsky, discusses Mukarovsky's understanding and knowledge of"function". Chapter four examines"norm", which is closely related to"function", discussed Mukarovsky's theory about"aesthetic norm". Chapter five, by means of Mukarovsky's"intentionality"and"unintentionality"in art, discusses his understanding of"sign". Through"personality and literary development", chapter six discusses Mukarovsky's view about personality and literary history. Chapter seven studies the relationship between Russian Formalism and Mukarovsky. Conclusion mainly from the sociological, the diachronic and dialectical dimension studies the success and failure of Mukarovsky's methodology and makes an outlook about future's study of Mukarovsky.