Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-nwzlb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T11:55:25.320Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Theatrical Illusion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Extract

Otakar Zich (1879–1934) is a striking figure in modern czech aesthetics and art theory. A gifted librettist and opera composer and a professor at Charles University in Prague, his place in the history of aesthetics is still controversial. His Aesthetics of Dramatic Art (Estetika dramatického umění [1931]) came out at a time of paradigmatic change in the humanities (the emergence in the 1930s of functional structuralism through the Prague linguistic circle). Also, it was only in the 1930s that the Czech theatrical avant-garde got into full swing. Zich's work apparently “fell short” both of the new scientific paradigm, imposed by the tandem of Roman Jakobson (1896–1982) and Jan Mukařovský (1891–1975), and of the expectations of the students of theater coming from Mukařovský's seminars, some of them already distinguished avant-garde directors (Veltruský 67). Zich's untimely death precluded the development of his project, as well as fruitful debate about it. Mukařovský, as Zich'fs protégé, felt obliged to address the work of his mentor, but his early semiotic reading was avowedly partial and tentative and barely concealed his puzzlement. This marginal inclusion in the new paradigm without real assimilation left Zich's complex and comprehensive undertaking out in the cold.

Type
Criticism in Translation
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Diderot, Denis. “The Paradox of Acting.” Translated by Walter Herries Pollock. Theatre/Theory/Theatre: The Major Critical Texts from Aristotle and Zeami to Soyinka and Havel, edited by Gerould, Daniel, Applause Theatre and Cinema Books, 2000, pp. 198201.Google Scholar
Frege, Gottlob. “On Sense and Reference.” Translated by Max Black. Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, edited by Geach, Peter and Black, , Basil Blackwell, 1980, pp. 5678.Google Scholar
Husserl, Edmund. Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology. translated by Boyce Gibson, W.R., George Allen/Macmillan, 1931.Google Scholar
Husserl, Edmund. The Shorter Logical Investigations. translated by Findlay, J.N., Routledge, 2001.Google Scholar
Quinn, Michael. “The Prague School Concept of the Stage Figure”. The Semiotic Bridge: Trends from California, edited by Rauch, Irmengard and Carr, Gerald F., Mouton de Gruyter, 1989, pp. 7585.Google Scholar
Saltz, David Z.“Infiction and Outfiction: The Role of Fiction in Theatrical Performance”. Staging Philosophy: Intersections of Theater, Performance, and Philosophy, edited by Krasner, David and Saltz, , U of Michigan P, 2006, pp. 203–20.Google Scholar
Schechner, Richard. “Magnitudes of Performance”. Performance Theory, rev. ed., Routledge, 1988, pp. 290332.Google Scholar
Veltruský, Jiří.“Theatre in the Corridor”. The Drama Review, vol. 23, no. 4, Dec. 1979, pp. 6780.Google Scholar
Volek, Emil. Introduction. Teoría teatral de la Escuela de Praga: De la fenomenología a la semiótica performativa, edited and translated by Jandová, Jarmila and Volek, , Editorial Fundamentos/Resad/U Nacional de Colombia, 2013, pp. 2736.Google Scholar
Volek, Emil. “Theatrology an Zich, and Beyond: Notes towards a Metacritical Repositioning of Theory, Semiotics, Theatre, and Aesthetics.” Structuralist Theatre Theory, special issue of Theatralia, vol. 15, no. 2, 2012, pp. 168–85.Google Scholar
Zich, Otakar. Estetika dramatického umění: Teoretická dramaturgie. 1931. Jal-Reprint, 1977.Google Scholar

Works Cited

Lange, Konrad. Das Wesen der Kunst: Grundzüge einer realistischen Kunstlehre. Grote, 1901.Google Scholar
Taine, Hippolyte. De l'intelligence. vol. 1, Hachette, 1870.Google Scholar
Taine, Hippolyte. On Intelligence. L. Reeve, 1871.Google Scholar
Zich, Otakar. Estetika dramatického umění: Teoretická dramaturgie. 1931. Jal-Reprint, 1977.Google Scholar