Review

Reviewed Work(s): LITERATURE AND SEMIOTICS: A STUDY OF THE WRITINGS OF YU. M.

LOTMAN by Ann Shukman
Review by: Patricia Galloway
Source: Style, Vol. 15, No. 1, The Flux of the Art (Winter 1981), pp. 55-61
Published by: Penn State University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/42945336
Accessed: 04-07-2021 19:19 UTC

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 BOOK REVIEWS 55

there exists a hierar

pology, but studying
if only because each
the same time decas
code which is comm
ample, the medieval
fying system if the
another level, the be
fact that the opposi
hierarchy is thus of
the codes themselves
ferent information from them. The modern reader of medieval texts will come
to mind. Lastly there exist periods in which culture is highly symbolic, furnished
with a marked degree of semioticity, like the Middle Ages; while others, like the
Enlightenment, are dedicated to celebration of the natural, the real, as opposed
to the social and to the symbolic. In other words, each structural cultural type
will be found to have its own specific attitude with regard to the sign.
These ideas are to be further developed by Lotman in the years to come
and applied to different moments of Russian culture in a way which frequently
complements Uspenskij's researches. Both, indeed, at times work together on
the same projects (see the Acts of the Conferences of Tartu, IV 1969, V 1971,
VI 1973). In particularly original fashion this is the case for O semiotičeskom
mechanizme Kul' tury (in Trudy po znakovým sistēmām, V, Tartu 1971, pp.
144-176), where the authors investigate in the light of a particular intelligence
the correlated notions of textuality and cultural modeling. The present Antho-
logy provides a good background against which to read Russian semiotics' more
recent texts.

Maria Corti

LITERATURE AND SEMIOTICS: A STUDY OF THE WRITINGS OF YU. M.

LOTMAN, by Ann Shukman. Amsterdam/New York/Oxford: Nort

Publishing Company , 1977. xii + 239 pp. $39.25.

There are several flaws in Ann Shukman's study of Lotman's w

semiotics, but the opening of the review should stress its value to t
literary theory and criticism. This book is a rich source of informat
is generally unobtainable, even if one can read Russian. Lotman's wo
Shukman's central concern, but because she has placed it firmly in
text of the whole Moscow-Tartu semiotics group, she has treated in
tail a body of theory and criticism which is barely known in the W
of a dearth of translations and the inaccessibility of many of the or

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 56 BOOK REVIEWS

This great yirtue of

Chapters one and sev
pressed in published
mer schools (Append
chapters show the d
extra-linguistic semi
generate in places in
have only marginal i
thought. Conversely,
ticularly since almos
inevitable problems
where does the reader feel the same sort of sure overview of the materials that
characterizes Jonathan Culler's treatment of the French structuralists.1 Since
Culler is one of the two editors of the series Meaning and Art of which this is
the first volume, I am afraid that this will be a real expectation. It should be re-
membered that Culler was preceded by others who had broken the ground, not
only editors of essay collections but also literary theorists; Shukman really has
no predecessors, and much of the territory here is quite virgin. In addition,
the eclecticism of the Soviet school of semiotics is if anything greater than that
of any similar western developments, and however much the western reader
might wish for a predigested summary, I doubt that any such could do justice
to the school's variety. That said, the facts that the very full bibliography only
rarely goes past 1975 and that there is an inexcusable number of typesetting
errors suggest that perhaps the book was rather rushed into print in the wake
of the English translations of Lotman's major works.
Since the major interest of the book and of most of its potential readers
is Lotman's own work, I will look in detail only at chapters two through six.
These chapters form a historical study of the development of Lotman's approach
to semiotics through his books and major papers. A summary of his earlier
work as a literary and cultural historian appears in Appendix I.
Chapter two treats "Lectures on Structural Poetics" ( Lektsii po strukturaV
noy poetike , 1964), Lotman's first "structuralist" work. Shukman's reading of
this work is very thorough in its attention both to the sources of Lotman's ideas
and to the areas in which these ideas are inaccurate or contradictory. From her
wide knowledge of Russian Formalism she shows clearly how Lotman's rejection
of the earlier movement was based upon an unjust evaluation of Formalist work
and was influenced by the statistical methods which were then and remain today2
the foundation of Soviet work in computational linguistics. The book treats three
main topics: a theory of art, of poetic language, and of the "extra-text." Lotman's
general theory of art is based upon the notions of the function of art as world-
model (not yet the full-blown idea of a "secondary modelling system") and of the
perception of the work of art as a dialectical process of oppositions and resolutions.

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 BOOK REVIEWS 57

He attempts to ar
but Shukman's table of the differences between the scientific and artistic models
reveals Lotman's strikingly romanticized view of the objectivity of science, a strong
element of psychologism, and his commitment to a functional view of art. His
notion of art as model binds him here to a position where artistic value is directly
related to representational "adequacy." The dialectical view of the process of cog-
nition of the work of art, however, leads to some of the book's most fruitful sug-
gestions.
These suggestions are found in Lotman's examination of the features which
are said to make poetic language "poetic"- rhythm, rhyme, unusual juxtapositions
of words, larger structural elements like lines and stanzas. He finds that all of them
function to enhance repetition and thus to bring about highlighting, semantic com-
parison, and, through the phonological principle of opposition, the generation of
meaning. For Lotman all of these effects are paradigmatic and serve to build up
some sort of static structure in the reader's mind; there is only minimal considera-
tion of the sequential aspect of the text. Unless one is quite familiar with Russian,
the detailed examples which are meant to justify Lotman's claim that every element
of the text is meaning-bearing are rather opaque, but Shukman works through sev-
eral of the most important of the analyses and assesses their effectiveness. She
points out the inadequacy of his argument for the acquisition by phonemes of the
semantic loading of the word they compose, although one still wonders to what
degree this idea springs from a tradition and experience of performed poetry
which is generally foreign to the more print-oriented modern Western experience
of poetry. She also notes that his analysis of poetic language and its macroseman-
tics is done totally without reference to external context. This portion of the book,
however, offers several interesting and valuable ideas which would later become
quite important, and it is probably the most detailed theoretical exploration of the
semantic properties of poetic language now available.
Lotman did not ignore context in the theoretical portion of Lektsii. Its
third section treats context of "extra-text" as an integral part of the meaning of
the work of art. Shukman points out that this section "has moved away from,
and, in a sense, is negating" the orientation of the previous sections, for although
there Lotman did limit himself to an examination of poetic language, he never
establishes a connection between the two areas of reference for the poetic text,
never shows how they interact. Lotman's notion of "extra-text" is very similar to
the "literary competence" discussed by Culler,3 though it goes beyond the literary
to include cultural competence as well. Lotman sees the function of the "extra-
text" as crucial to a typology of artistic works and hence to a theory of artistic
value. Works are to be classified into those which fall under the esthetics of iden-
tity (works which fulfill all the expectations of a given artistic tradition) and those
which belong to an esthetics of contrast (which fight the prevailing tradition and
create their own code). Any work is to be judged by the consistency of its adherence
to the one or the other.

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58 BOOK REVIEWS

The third chapter

in 1963 and 1965,
influences here, tw
possibility of poly
vian notion of con
ing called "multi-s
to specify the task
work the "structur
ture which he feel
a painting, poem,
less to say, indicat
be devised, nor do
The second articl
It should be noted
tion of this article
term seems to cov
the relation of ide
meaning possible,
act. since in Also,
transcoding does n
them. Lotman atte
tagmatic) transcod
systems like litera
to claim that secon
one which is more
created by structu
discussing the corr
how Lotman is str
literature and how
apply the notion o
of internal transco
transcoding. The i
a closed belief syst
is applied so broad
process of explana
alogy is more trou
much of the specif
ground without re
In chapter four S
cultural typology,
nent. These varied
heir attitudes towa

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 BOOK REVIEWS 59

a comparative meth
morality in mediev
typology; attitude t
a meta-language for
functions in culture
of the problems or
and its contribution
for chapter five, w
turalist ideas: cultur
describes a series of
as an expression of
in another country,
cal criticism treats
and others. The lead
coding, the languag
through systems of
slezy na glazakh" at
does not seem to me
of poetry.
Shukman examines "The Structure of the Artistic Text" {Struktura khud-
ozhestvennogo teksta , 1971) in chapter six. She points out how much material
from earlier works, including a huge chunk of Lektsa and many of the articles, is
reprinted in Struktura. Having previously dealt with this material, she concentrates
on the new ideas contained in the book: a lengthy justification of art as language,
the notion of text, and the elements of the literary work. The contradictions in
and theoretical problems with Lotman's view of art as language are carefully ex-
plored, but Iiis introduction of Kolmogorov's notion of linguistic entropy to
explain the process of perception of the artistic text is less rigorously handled,
although its inadequacy for the purpose is pointed out. As early as 1959 Colin
Cherry warned in an introduction to communication theory that the concepts
of entropy and information load are at best inappropriate in a consideration of
human communication.5 Lotman's work is certainly capable of standing with-
out it. It is not a crucial notion; he depends upon it only when he needs a "scien-
tific" justification, and when he does so he often finds himself trapped in con-
tradiction.
I would take issue with Shukman's assertion that the section of Struktura
which treats the composition of the literary work is original. This section of
the book merely emphasizes Lotman's problems with the analysis of non-poetic
genres; until this point, which comes near the close of the book, narrative and
the syntagmatic axis of literature in general have had short shrift, and even here
Lotman attempts to convert sequence and teleology into spatial metaphors, using
the insights of his earlier work on the cultural significance of spatial concepts.

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 60 BOOK REVIEWS

Nearly all the idea

sistently develope
written on narrat
of view. To be fair
would like to see U
had). The book is
and the syntagma
But there is muc
does not show, eve
Lotman's work mi
theory, but severa
theory and the re
others, Lotman of
and text comprehe
velops some valuab
lation to play. By
reader towards th
velopment of a re
is unsatisfactory b
instead, it is essen
yet not declared a
claims, "permit a
that that view is d
almost obsessively
Lektsii. Shukman
on its structure.

She does not, however, mislead the reader often. The range of Lotman's
interests and the heterogeneity of the topics on which he has written make her
task formidable, as I have said. Literature and Semiotics bears a signifying re-
lation to the semiotic writings of Yuri Lotman which verges upon the iconic,
and as such it gives a very good idea of what these writings are like.
As for Lotman's work itself, Shukman leaves one with the impression
that even she is rather puzzled at the intensity of the attention that his work
is receiving. Despite its real shortcomings, I see four main reasons for its pre-
sent popularity in this country, only the first of which is connected with its
theoretical perspicuity. The first is that Lotman's thorough treatment of pros-
ody is unique among semioticians. The second has to do with its affinities with
the American tradition of Pierce and Morris for semiotics and Shannon and *
Weaver for information theory. The third stems from the fact that good English
translations of his major work are now available; Slāvists, it seems, are more
aware of the problems of comprehending a theoretical work in another language
than are other foreign language specialists. Finally, Lotman's obvious devotion
to the cause of literary history and the social function of art fits quite well

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 BOOK REVIEWS 61

with the present r

marxist approache
Neither Shukman's book nor Lotman's work contributes much to a
cut-and-dried definition of semiotics, certainly not so much as Eco's intro-
duction to Theory of Semiotics.** Ann Shukman portrays the process of
development through which Soviet semiotics and Lotman in particular came
to focus upon secondary modelling systems and their role in the analysis of
culture. This book brings a good portion of this work to a wider audience,
and incidentally makes us aware of the large body of Soviet work, of which
Lotman is only the most visible representative. This exploratory work defines
the discipline's boundaries by its methods' success or failure. The Soviets have
staked claim to a large territory within the domain discussed by Eco; Shukman
shows us how they are beginning to break the ground.

* Jonathan Culler, Structuralist Poetics (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 19753.
2
Francis Knowles, "Recent Soviet work on computer techniques for representing
natural language meaning," in The Analysis of Meaning: Informatics 5, ed. Maxine Mac-
Cafferty and Kathleen Gray (London: Aslib, 1979), 70-84.

^Culler, Chapter 6.
4
Jurij Lotman, The Structure of the Artistic Text , trans. Ronald Vroon (Ann Arbor:
Michigan Slavic Contributions No. 7, 1977).

^ Colin Cherry, On Human Communication (New York: Science Editions, 1959),

214-16.

^Umberto Eco, .4 Theory of Semiotics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,

1976), 3-31.

Patricia Galloway

PHENOMENOLOGY, STRUCTURALISM, SEMIOLOGY. Ed. by Harry R.

Garvin. Issue Editor, Patrick Brady. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press ,
1976. 250 pp. $7.50.

Structuralism and semiotics have developed out of the philosophical tra-

dition of positivism. As a consequence, the focus of these disciplines has been on
forms, rules, and questions of methodology. Phenomenology, on the other hand,
has many characteristics which are antithetical to the tenets of positivism. Its
concern is on the phenomenon of consciousness, the conflicts associated with
human values, and the quest for meaning behind the human condition. For these
and other reasons, the juxtaposition between phenomenology and the paradigms

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