The Prague School Theory of Theater

Author(s): Jii Veltrusky

Source: Poetics Today, Vol. 2, No. 3, Drama, Theater, Performance: A Semiotic Perspective
(Spring, 1981), pp. 225-235
Published by: Duke University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1772473
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THE PRAGUE SCHOOL THEORY

OF THEATER
Jiri Veltrusky
Paris

Strikingly contrasted assessments of the achievement of the Prague School theory

of theater have recently been made by two scholars who are both well acquainted
with the subject. In Frantisek Deak's view, it is not possible to speak about a
structuralist theory of theater because the Prague School never fully applied its
conceptual system in this area and because its writings on theater cannot compare
with its contribution to literary theory in either quantity or variety (Deak, 1976).
According to Ladislav Matejka, on the other hand, it was in the domain of
dramatic art that the Prague semiotics of art was worked out most thoroughly
(Matejka, 1976).
Contradictory though they may be, the two opinions are not as mutually exclusive as they seem. The studies concerning dramatic art add up to only a small
fraction of the volume of the Prague School's work on literature and art.
Moreover, some vital problems of the theory of theater are dealt with sketchily
and some are hardly touched upon. But the Prague Linguistic Circle focused
primarily on general linguistics, and literature overlaps with language so much
that literary theory can draw on the linguists' findings quite heavily. That is not
the case of the theater. From this point of view, it is quite significant that the
Prague School's work on the theater was far superior in quantity and variety to its
contribution to the study of the visual arts, music and dance, areas which are still
further removed from linguistics.
At the same time, precisely because it dealt with phenomena so different from
language, the Prague School theory of theater brought to light certain problems
of the semiotics of art that would otherwise have remained hidden; which of
course does not mean that it was always able to solve them. As a Polish scholar
recently put it, this was the semiotics of theater in statu nascendi which until quite
recently was systematically disregarded by scholars claiming a pioneering role in
this field (Slaviiiska, 1977).
The present paper does not seek to assess the merits and shortcomings of the
Prague School theory of theater. Its purpose is to summarize its main findings
and, wherever possible, put them into some historical perspective.
? Poetics Today, Vol. 2:3 (1981), 225-235.

226

JIRI VELTRUSKY

The scope of the paper is strictly confined to the subject indicated by its title. It
deals exclusively with the theory of theater, without branching off into other
fields of the Prague School's activities, more or less closely related to it.' And it
takes into account only studies published before the liquidation of the Prague
Linguistic Circle in 1948.2
1. THE ORIGINS
The theory of theater occupies a somewhat peculiar position in the work of the
Prague School: Unlike the theory of literature and esthetics, it drew very little on
the heritage of Russian formalism. Even an early formalist study by Petr
Bogatyrev on folk theater (1923) had very little influence on the conception of the
theater that subsequently developed within the Prague Linguistic Circle, although
Bogatyrev was one of its prominent figures.
Secondly, the scholars who developed the Prague School theory of theater
came from very different backgrounds. Otakar Zich, its immediate precursor who
was at the same time its founding father, laid the foundations of the structural
and semiotic conception but considered himself neither a structuralist nor a
semiotician; his approach was psychological. Petr Bogatyrev was an ethnologist,
Jindfich Honzl an avant-garde stage director, Jan Mukafovsky was mainly
concerned with poetics and esthetics; Roman Jakobson, too, contributed to the
theory of theater.3
Thirdly, structuralism entered this field when Zich proposed a complete and
coherent theory in his monumental book, Esthetics of Dramatic Art (1931).4 It
was the other way around in linguistics, literary scholarship, esthetics or ethnography, where the analysis and interpretation of empirical facts had come first.
Zich could only build up his system at the cost of some serious oversimplification. Among the almost innumerable functions the various components
of the theater can have, he studied only those they assume in what might broadly
be called realistic or (in Honzl's words) conventional theater. By a sort of natural
reaction, the younger scholars were inclined to focus on entirely different
material. This tendency found perhaps its most characteristic expression in Karel
Brusak's paper on the classical Chinese theater, a minute description of a
' In particular, studies in dramatic literature, film, ritual and folk costume have been left aside here.
Later studies by Prague School theoreticians (such as Bogatyrev, Jakobson, BruSak and myself)
reflect their own subsequent intellectual development as much as the conceptions of the Prague Linguistic Circle. The recent work of younger scholars more or less influenced by the Prague School
(for instance Herta Schmid in Germany, Frantisek Deak in the United States, Ivo Osolsobe, Oleg
Sus, Bohuslav Benes, Miroslav Prochazka and others in Czechoslovakia) represents an altogether
new phenomenon. Some studies by members of the Prague Linguistic Circle were never published,
and since only a few of them are now available to me, I have not attempted to take them into
account here. Most of this unpublished material is probably lost for ever.
3 There is no area of the Prague School's activity to which Jakobson did not contribute.
4 It is only quite recently, forty-six years after its publication, that Zich's book was reprinted, in
Germany (1977). The reprint contains a "Preface" by Oleg Sus, in fact a thorough study which
places Zich's theory in a historical perspective and discusses some of its major aspects in the light of
today's semiotics (Sus, 1977).
2

PRAGUESCHOOLTHEORYOF THEATER

227

dramatic structure made up of lexicalized signs with meanings rigorously

determined by convention (Brusak, 1939).
In the process, some parts of Zich's system disintegrated and some were
relegated to the background. Not that the theoreticians of the Prague Linguistic
Circle disputed Zich's tremendous achievement;5everything in his work that the
study of a wider range of material had not shaken or modified was either tacitly or
explicitly recognized as valid. But the main emphasis of the researchshifted. That
is the reason why Zich's pioneering semiotic analyses of music in the theater and
of opera as theater, for instance, were never pursued. Other discoveries of his
were taken no further because besides being a precursor of the Prague School he
was also, so to speak, its continuator by anticipation. Indeed, this great thinker
dealt with certain fundamental problems which were to remain beyond the reach
of the gradually developing semiotics of art for many years to come.
A rather striking instance is Zich's bold idea of dividing the components of the
theater into the visual and the auditory, and tying this in with the distinction
between the arts of space and the arts of time. He pointed out that in the theater
the auditory signs are organized in space as well as in time, while time is as much
involved as space in organizing the visual signs. These are very topical issues on
the agenda of today's semiotics, almost half a century later. Zich also studied the
ways the two types of signs and the two principles of their organization mingle
and interpenetrate, and found here the basic characteristic of the theater as
distinct from the other forms of art (Zich, 1931: 213-4). The Prague School theoreticians never again dealt with such questions - although the relationship
between visual signs, music, noise and speech was examined with respect to film
(Jakobson, 1933).6
In historical perspective, Zich's work presents itself as at once belonging and
not belonging to the body of the Prague School theory of theater. This
ambivalence is due to the nature of the Prague School as much as to the particular
features of Zich's own system. The different members of the Prague Linguistic
Circle never conceived their writings about the theater as organic parts of a single,
gradually constructed doctrine. In fact, although they all belonged in some sense
to the same school of thought, they held widely differing views. Progress was
being made by discussing and confronting these views rather than by complementary research. It is only in retrospect that the sum of their writings can be
perceived as a theory.
2. COMPLEXITYOF THE THEATRICALSTRUCTURE
The theater was perceived as an independent art in its own right. The same view
was held with respect to acting.7 Yet it was fully recognized that not only the
reciter's, but also the actor's voice performance and, through its intermediary, all
Bogatyrev alone rejected this theory, yet even he could not always escape its influence.
Occasionally, the differences between the types of signs used in the theater were dismissed as irrelevant (Honzl, 1940c), while in other cases the division of the components into visual and auditory
became a mere instrument of classification (Brusak, 1939).
7 Mukafovsky
(1947) considered even recitation an independent art. Zich did not (1931: 26-7).
5

228

JIRI VELTRUSKY

the other components of the theatricalstructureare more or less predeterminedby

the sound structure and the semantic qualities of the text (Mukafovsky, 1939;
Veltrusky, 1941). That was not a contradiction within the theory but rather an
effort to study the antinomies and tensions existing in the art of the theater itself.
It came to be seen that the theater is a distinct semiotic system, using heterogeneous materials and drawing on other semiotic systems - language, pictorial
signs, sculpture, architecture, music, gestures, etc. - while differing from them
all.
This fact has two paramount consequences. First, the theater has many more,
and much more varied, components than any other form of art. Secondly, each of
the contributory semiotic systems tends to keep its own characteristic way of
relating the signatum to the signans and, as a result, each type of sign to some
extent clashes with all the others. At the same time, through combination with the
others, each acquires certain new features and semiotic potentialities which it does
not have in itself outside the theater. This may be illustratedby the three examples
of signs borrowed respectively from sculpture, music and language.
On the stage, the statue loses its characteristicplurality of "views"because the
spectator sees it from one angle only. It may, however, be endowed with new
qualities under the impact of theatrical lighting (Bogatyrev, 1938b). Moreover,
the ability to convey meanings pertaining to time, process, movement, forces,
tensions and such like, which sculpture possesses despite its immobility and the
law of gravity to which it is subject, may be brought out when it is juxtaposed and
by the same token contrasted with the actor on the stage. A contrast between the
immobility of the statue and the mobility of the actor may arise even if there is no
sculpture on the stage, for example when the actors' performance is designed to
separate their postures from their movements, when the immobile mask is substituted for the play of the facial muscles, and so on (Mukarovsky, 1941). In
certain forms of puppet theater, too, the opposition between the statue and the
actor turns into an internal antinomy of the stage figure, it being understood that
the signs making up the stage figure are distributed between the puppet and the
puppeteer (Zich, 1923, 1931: 59).
Musical signs are similarly affected, even in the case of opera where the music is
so preponderant that, instead of interacting with each of the other components
separately, it can combine them into a mere complement of itself. Any sort of
music, whether absolute or programmatic, can be used in the theater (Zich,
1931: 394). But the intrinsic meaning of its procedures does not remain the same
when it becomes an integral part of the theatrical structure (Zich, 1931: 38, 396).
In combination with the other components of the theater, music can also call
forth fairly concrete meanings, either by contiguity or by similarity or by an
interplay of both. Not only conative and expressive but also referential meanings
may be so conveyed (Zich, 1931: 277-349), even by compositions which bear no
concrete meanings in themselves (Zich, 1931: 394). The leitmotif is only one of
many examples of music used to evoke such concrete meanings; in the Chinese
theater, for instance, music serves to indicate drunkenness (it would infringe the
esthetic convention to indicate this by acting), fighting, flight, etc. (Brusak, 1939).

PRAGUESCHOOLTHEORYOF THEATER

229

Moreover, the theater may draw on music without even including any piece of
music among its components. The actors' movements and gestures may be shaped
according to "agogics"and rhythm of a musical nature (without coming anywhere
close to dance), a measurable rhythm may be imposed on the speeches, their intonation may be modeled on musical melody (by assimilating the syllables to
distinct tones, or notes, in place of the "portamento"which characterizesspeech),
etc. (Mukafovsky, 1941). Through such proceduresmusic infiltrates the theatrical
performance almost unnoticeably, yet affects it in a similar way - though most
probably to a lesser degree - as when it is actually part of its structure. For
example, the insistent reality of the actor and his behavior is attenuated, the
distinction between man and object on the stage is blurred, and the unity of the
whole performance is emphasized.
As regards the linguistic signs, the striking materiality of acting tends to
interfere with the tenuous bonds between their meaning and sensory material, and
consequently with their ability to conjure up the most complicated relationships
among meanings. At the same time, however, the actor gives more weight and
vigor to the language he voices and, in return, receives from it the ability to
communicate extremely flexible and subtle, yet precise, meanings (Veltrusky,
1941). Furthermore, language on the stage combines, to different degrees, with all
the other components of the theater and enters into dialectical tensions with each
one of them separately and directly (Mukarovsky, 1937b). Yet, just as in a work
of verbal art, it can also be used so as to abolish the distinction between reference
to reality and sheer absurdity (Jakobson, 1937). And again, the theater may draw
on the semiotics of language without actually employing any linguistic signs. In
mime, gestures and movements can be shaped according to the analytical and discursive principle that is proper to language. Mime also exploits the fact that
postures, gestures and facial movements, which by their primary expressivity
contrast with the fundamentally conventional linguistic signs, can themselves be
either immediately expressive or conventionalized. Chaplin based an entire
performance on a systematic confrontation and interference between conventionalized postures, gestures and facial expressions on the one hand and those that
are immediately expressive on the other (Mukaiovsky, 1931).8
As an independent semiotic system freely drawing on all types of signs, the
theater is an extremely complicated structure, perhaps more complicated than any
other (Mukarovsky, 1937a). So it was of the utmost importance that, following
Zich's lead, a dramatic work was perceived and analyzed mainly as an interplay of
meanings conjured up by its many material components or, to use Mukaiovsky's
partly metaphorical formulation, as an "immaterialinterplay of forces moving in
time and involving the spectator in their constantly shifting mutual tensions"
(Mukarovsky, 1941). However, some of the studies produced by the members of
the Prague Linguistic Circle, especially Bogatyrev and Honzl, seemed to have
inherited one of the most serious shortcomings of Zich's theory (derived from
8 In Mukarovsky's view, Chaplin's acting was relevant to the theater because he
performed in front
of an immobile camera (Mukavovsky, 1931).

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JIRI VELTRUSKY

"realistic"theater), namely the tendency to interpret the sign as a thing which in

itself and by itself represents, stands for, or characterizessomething else.9 Such a
"one-to-one" conception lagged far behind Prague School linguistics and poetics
and their study of the semantic values of sound patterns, intonation, verse,
morphological forms, grammatical categories, syntactic constructions, linguistic
and extra-linguistic context and such like. Yet, it was Bogatyrev who pinpointed
one of the most important features of the semiotics of theater, namely that a great
many of the signs the theater produces are not plain signs, so to speak, but signs
of signs (Bogatyrev, 1938b).
Any attempt to study the countless components of the theater and their mutual
relations without focusing on meaning would be bound to end in confusion or
sterility. Yet it is indispensable to analyze them one by one. The Prague School
did set out to do so but, apart from Zich's systematic treatment, which precisely in
this area proved somewhat obsolete, it only got around to examining certain
aspects of acting (Mukarovsky, 1931; Honzl, 1939, 1940b, 1946/7, 1947/8), dramatic action (Honzl, 1940a; Veltrusky, 1940) language in the theater (Jakobson,
1937; Mukarovsky, 1937a, 1937b; Bogatyrev, 1940), and the theatrical
implications of the dramatic text (Veltrusky, 1941).10
3. THE UNIFYINGFACTORS
In spite of the diversity, complexity and variablity of its components, the
theatrical structure possesses a certain number of constant factors. Some of its
components, though very complex in themselves, stand out as those which unify
all the others and ensure the integration of the whole. Most generally speaking,
this is the function of acting, action, and space; music must be added to their
number in certain forms of theater, especially in opera and melodrama, but this
aspect was hardly ever studied by the Prague School.
Acting performs this function because all that goes on during the performance
centers on the actor, so to speak. It is through him that the other components
receive their theatrical function and meaning (Mukafovsky, 1941). This does not
necessarily presuppose that all he does is strictly integrated in the representation
of a dramatic character (Bogatyrev, 1938a; Honzl, 1940a; Mukarovsky, 1937).
The reason why everything centers on the actor is that he is a real, live person, so
that the signs he produces with his own body cannot be reduced to a mere
signans/signatum relation (Zich, 1931: 55; Bogatyrev, 1938b; Honzl, 1940a;
Mukafovsky, 1941). In acting, the artist himself is personally present in his work.
All the other components appear, therefore, as in some sense less real. For the
same reason, the actor is a counterpart of the spectator, provoking the spectator's
empathy (Mukaiovsky, 1941) - the more so since there is also a constantly shifting actor/spectator relation among the actors themselves (Bogatyrev, 1937).
9 Bogatyrev went so far as to divide the components into the "representing" and the "purely
theatrical" ones (Bogatyrev, 1940: 123-8, 129-32).
10Some of the unpublished papers mentioned in footnote 2 dealt with still other specific components
of the theater.

PRAGUESCHOOLTHEORYOF THEATER

231

As for the action, it was recognized as the very essence, or foundation, of

theatricality. Only Bogatyrev, undoubtedly misled by the magic function which is
all-pervasive in folklore, tended to base theatricality on the somewhat mystical
concept of "transformation" or "transfiguration" (Bogatyrev, 1940: 8-13)."
Action was perceived as a ceaseless flow, or progression, of meanings which
combine with each other regardless of the nature of the signs - words, movement, gesture, costume, prop, stage set, music, light, film, projected slide and so
on - which respectivelyconvey them (Honzl, 1940c; Mukarovsky, 1937b, 1941).
Every single component of the theater is involved to some extent in the
construction of the action and is therefore endowed with functions comparable
with and complementary to those of the other components. In the flow of this allembracing action, even the "existential"distinction between man and object is
erased because, on the plane of immaterialmeanings, either one can appear at any
moment as the acting subject (action-bearer) or a mere accessory (Veltrusky,
1940).
Honzl in particular insisted on the unity of the action so much that he came
dangerously close to considering the different types of signs by which it is
successively carried as interchangeable (Honzl, 1940c).'2 He did notice that there
is some sort of polarity between each sign and the function it assumes in the
context of the continuous action, but he dealt with it in purely metaphorical
terms, assimilating action to an electrical current, and the words, actors,
costumes, scenery and music to the conductors through which the current flows.
He developed the image as follows: "[. . .] this current, that is, dramatic action, is
not carried by the conductor that exerts the least resistance (dramatic action is not
always concentrated only in the performing actor) but rather theatricality
frequently is generated in the overcoming of obstacles caused by certain dramatic
devices (special theatrical effects when, for instance, action is concentrated solely
in the words or in the actor's motions or in off-stage sounds, and so on), in the
same way that a filament fiber glows just because it has resistance to an electric
current"(Honzl, 1940c).
It may be surprising that this vital issue was left at that. For it was recognized
that the opposition between the single units of meaning and the semantic context
which they make up is one of the basic structuralprinciplesin language and verbal
art (Mukarovsky, 1940). The theoreticians of the theater also discussed this
conception but never fully worked it out, especially not in writing. It would have
required a far more advanced understanding of the common and the distinctive
characteristicsof different sign systems. Zich had perceived this difficult problem,
which was as yet beyond the grasp of the Prague Linguistic Circle; when he tried
to prove that action was the very essence of theatricality, he based his argument
on the distinction between visual and auditory components and on the contention
" Bogatyrev'slife-longtemptationto be an actor
(Jakobson,1976)mayalso havecontributedto his
insistence on "transformation" or "transfiguration" as the essence of theatricality.
12
Honzl corrected this view later, at least by implication, when he stressed the radical opposition
between a given content as described by the chorus and as mimed by the actor (Honzl, 1943).

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JIRI VELTRUSKY

that, in all its components, the theater is an art of both space and time.
Space in the theater is not only the material space made up of the playing area
and the spectators' area plus the sets. Zich developed the crucial concept of what
he called "dramaticspace" (Zich, 1931: 246). This can be defined as the dynamic
(because it is constantly changing) spatial aspect of dramatic action or, to put it
differently, as the constantly changing cluster of relations among the subjects,
tools and complements of that action; these space relations continually change in
time because every movement, gesture, utterance or sound - to name just a few
of the many factors involved - modify their pattern.
The "dramatic space" need not coincide with the playing area. This area itself
does not necessarily remain the same for the whole duration of the performance
(Bogatyrev, 1937, 1940: 95-7, 99-100). The theater also has means of making the
"dramaticspace" shrink and expand in the course of the performance irrespective
of the delimitation of the playing area. In addition, there are the many forms of
the so-called imaginary stage or, to use a more accurate term, "imaginaryaction
space," that is, the action manifesting itself either by off-stage noises or voices, or
by the on-stage characters'reactions to, or comments on, the action going on in
the area contiguous to the stage, or else by subsequent reporting of those hidden
events. Dramatic space unifies all the meanings the various components evoke
simultaneously just as dramatic action unifies all the meanings they evoke
successively.
At the same time, since dramatic space itself is in constant change, its unifying
function involves succession, too, just as the unifying function of the action also
involves simultaneity.
4. THE SIGNANS AND THE SIGNATUM

Zich laid the foundations of the semiotics of theater when he conceptually

separated the signans from the signatum in acting, namely the stage figure created
by the actor from the character, or dramatis persona, represented by that
figure - and when he separated them both from the actor as an artist (Zich,
1931: 55-6). Most of the theoreticians belonging to the Prague Linguistic Circle
were reluctant to adopt this concept of the stage figure as distinct from both the
actor and the character. At first sight, their reluctancemay be hard to understand,
especially since Zich's separation of the three concepts corresponds fairly closely
to what the Prague School was trying to achieve when dealing with other sign
systems and other forms of art.
The problem was not to distinguish the actor from his work or product; on the
contrary, the need to do so was fully recognized (Honzl, 1940; Mukarovsky,
1940).13It was the distinction between the stage figure and the character that
proved difficult to accept.'4
13 Mukafovsky (1941) even attempted to give the distinction between the actor and his "product" a
more general foundation by stating in this connection - perhaps oversimplifying the point - that
"tension between the subjectivity of the artist and the objectivity of his work exists in all the arts."
14The embarrassment caused by this distinction is well illustrated by the treatment it received in
Mukafovsky's review of Zich's book (1933). MukaTovsky did mention the distinction, called the

PRAGUE SCHOOL THEORY OF THEATER

233

In retrospect, the true reason why Zich's path-breaking separation of the stage
figure from the character was never fully accepted lay in the Saussurian conception of the sign, which the Prague School adopted, or rather in the way this
conception was interpreted at the time. The idea that the sign has simply two
facets, the signans and the signatum, does not quite apply to acting. In a specific

work of acting, it is often hard and sometimes utterly impossible to determine

what belongs to the stage figure and what to the character. The borderline
between the two is blurred, a great many features are part of the signans in some
respect and of the signatum in some other. Since in acting human beings, their
actions and behavior representhuman or anthropomorphous beings, their actions
and behavior, the difference between similarity and sameness tends to vanish
(Zich, 1931:56). 15
It does not follow that the distinction between signans and signatum is any less

important in the theater than in the other semiotic systems. What does follow is
that the two terms are not simply two facets of the sign, like the two sides of a
coin, but two poles of a dialectical antinomy, the internal antinomy of the sign.
But then, if this is true of the sign created by acting, it must be true of any sign
whatever. Or else the very term of sign would be metaphorical, and semiotics a
fiction. To investigate this extremely complicated problem would clearly have
been premature some thirty to fifty years ago, at the time when the Prague Linguistic Circle was trying both to develop general linguistics into a scientific
discipline and to explore in the same spirit several other areas of social activity, of
which the theater was only one. Special problems arose in all of them. Some
found solutions which in their turn opened new vistas for linguistics. Some others
remained unsolved. The relation between the signans and the signatum belongs to

this second category. The manifest embarrassmentit caused is in itself significant.

It shows that the researchthe Prague School pursued in fields other than language
was far from being a mere application of the linguist's methods and findings.

REFERENCES

BOGATYREV,PETR, 1977. Cesskij kukol'nyj i russkij narodnyj teatr [The Czech Puppet Theater and

the Russian Folk Theater] (Berlin-Petersburg).

1937 "Hra a divadlo" [Play and Theater], Listy pro umMnia kritiku 5.

relation between the stage figure and the dramatis persona "interesting"and concluded that in Zich's
view the stage figure objectively existing on the stage is a sign while the character existing in the mind
of the audience is the meaning of this sign. But in this passage he referred only to Zich's analysis of
the construction of the character (Zich, 1931: 115-8), not to his analysis of the stage figure (1931:
55-6). Moreover, by using, at the very beginning of the passage, the ambiguous term "dramatic
figure" he in fact blurred, no doubt unwittingly, Zich's conceptual distinction.
5 The conceptual intricacies of Zich's distinction between the actor, the stage figure and the character have recently been studied by Sus, especially in the light of some current theories of communication and semiosis (Sus, 1977). His interesting and thoughtful interpretation differs radically from
mine but the two do not seem to be incompatible.

234

JIRI VELTRUSKY

1938a "Zur Frage der gemeinsamen Kunstgriffe im alttschechischen und im volkstiimlichen

Theater," Slavische Rundschau 10.
1938a "Znaky divadelni" [Theatrical Signs], Slovo a slovesnost 4; English translation
("Semiotics in the Folk Theater") in: Matejka and Titunic, 1976.
1940 Lidove divadlo ceske' a slovenske [Czech and Slovak Folk Theater] (Prague: Borovy).
BRUSAK, KAREL,1939. "Znaky na &inske M divadle" [Signs in the Chinese Theater], Slovo a
slovesnost 5; English translation in: Matejka and Titunic, 1976.
DEAK,FRANTI'EK,1976. "Structuralism in Theater: The Prague School Contribution," Drama
Review 20:4, 83-94.
HONZL,JINDRICH, 1939. "Herecka postava" [The Acting Figure], Slovo a slovesnost 5.
1940a "Objevene divadlo v Lidovem divadle ceskem a slovenskem" [The Theater Discovered
in Czech and Slovak Folk Theater], Slovo a slovenost 6.
1940b ':Nad Diderotovym paradoxem" [Looking at Diderot's Paradox], Program D40.
1940c "Pohyb divadlnlho znaku" [Dynamics of the Sign in the Theater], Slovo a slovesnost 6;
English translation in: Matejka and Titunic, 1976.
1943 "Hierarchie divadelnich prostredkd" [The Hierarchy of Dramatic Devices], Slovo a
slovesnost 9; English translation in: Matejka and Titunic, 1976.
1946/7 "Definice mimiky" [Definition of Facial Expression], Otdzky divadla a filmu 2.
1947/8 "Mimicky znak a mimicky priznak" [Facial Expression as Sign and Symptom], Otazky
divadla a filmu 3.
ROMAN,1933. "Upadek filmu?" [Is the Cinema in Decline?] Listy pro umeni'a kritiku
JAKBOSON,
1; reprinted in Studies in Verbal Art (Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Contributions, 1971);
English translation in: Matejka and Titunic, 1976.
1937 "Dopis Romana Jakobsona JiffimuVoskovcovi a Janu Werichovi o noetice a semantice
svandy" [Letter by Roman Jakobson to Jivi Voskovec and Jan Werich on the Epistemology
and Semantics of Fun], 10 let Osvobozeneho divadla (Prague); reprinted in Studies in
Verbal Art (Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Contributions, 1971).
1976 "Petr Bogatyrev (29.1.1893 - 18.8.1971). Expert in Transfiguration," in: Ladislav
Matejka, ed., Sound, Sign and Meaning (Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Contributions).
1976. "Postscript: Prague School Semiotics," in: Matejka and Titunic,
LADISLAV,
MATEJKA,
1976.
ANDTITUNIC,IRWINR., eds., 1976. Semiotics of Art: Prague School ConLADISLAV
MATEJKA,
tributions (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press).
MUKAROVSK0, JAN, 1931. "Pokus of strukturni rozbor hereckdho zjevu" [An Attempt at a Structural Analysis of a Dramatic Figure], Literdrni noviny 5; reprinted in Studie z estetiky
(Prague: Odeon, 1966); English translation in Structure, Sign, and Function (New HavenLondon: Yale UP, 1978).
1933 "Otakar Zich: Estetika dramatickeho umni'. Teoreticka dramatugie" [Otakar Zich's
Esthetics of Dramatic Art: Theoretical Dramaturgy], Casopis pro modernl'fiologii 19.
1937a "K jevistnimu dialogu" [On Stage Dialogue], Program D37; reprinted in Kaptioly z
ceske poetiky I (Prague: Svoboda, 19482); English translation in The Word and Verbal Art
(New Haven-London: Yale UP, 1977).
1937b "Jevistni rec v avantgardnim divadle" [Stage Language in Avant-garde Theater], Studie
z estetiky (Prague: Odeon, 1966).
1939 "Pr6za K. Capka jako lyricka melodie a dialog" [K. &apek's Prose as Lyrical Melody
and as Dialogue], Slovo a slovesnost 5; reprinted in Kapitoly z ceske'poetiky II (Prague:
Svoboda, 19482); English translation (slightly abridged) in: Paul L. Garvin, ed., A Prague
School Reader on Esthetics, Literary Structure, and Style (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown
UP, 1964).
1940 "O jazcye basnickem," Slovo a slovesnost 6; reprinted in Kapitoly z ceske poetiky I
(Prague: Svoboda, 19482); English translation On Poetic Language (Lisse: The Peter de
Ridder Press, 1976), and in The Word and Verbal Art (New Haven-London: Yale UP, 1977).

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SCHOOL THEORY OF THEATER

235

1941 "K dneknimu stavu teorie divadla" [On the Current State of the Theory of Theater],
Program D41; reprinted in Studie z estetiky (Prague: Odeon, 1966); English translation in
Structure, Sign, and Function (New Haven-London: Yale UP, 1978).
1947 "O recitalnim umeni" [On the Art of Recitation], Program D47; reprinted in Kapitoly z
ceske poetikv I (Prague: Svoboda, 19482).
SLAVINSKA,
IRENA, 1977. "La semiologie du theatre in statu nascendi: Prague 1931-1941,"
Roczniki Humanistyczne 25:1.
Sus, OLEG,1977. "PYedmluva:Prftkopnik cesk6strukturne semanticke divadelni vedy" [Pioneer
of the Czech Structural-Semantic Theory of Theater] in: Zich, 1931.
VELTRUSKY,
JIRf, 1940. "lovek a pfedmet na divadle" [Man and Object in the Theater], Slovo
a slovesnost 6; English translation in: Paul L. Garvin, ed., A Prague School Reader on
Esthetics, Literary Structure, and Style (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown UP, 1964).
1941 "Dramaticky text jako souNast divadla" [Dramatic Text as a Component of Theater],
Slovo a slovesnost 7; English version (revised) in: Matejka and Titunic, 1976.
ZICH,OTAKER,1923. "Loutkove divadlo" [Puppet Theater], Drobne umni' - VYtvarnesnahy 4.
1931 Estetika dramatickeho umni' [Esthetics of Dramatic Art] (Prague: Melantrich);
reprinted, with preface by Oleg Sus (Wurzburg: JAL Reprint, 1977).