F. W. Galan
Historic Structures: The Prague School Project, 1928-1946.
University of Texas Press, 1984. University of Texas Press Slavic Series, no. 7. First edition. 0292730322 xvi/250 pages.
Volume, measuring approximately 6" x 9.25", is bound in red cloth, with stamped black lettering to spine. Book is in fine condition, with firm binding, clean and bright pages. Dust jacket exhibits light shelfwear. Jacket is preserved in mylar cover.
"In this first book-length study of Czech structuralism and semiotics in English, F. W. Galan explores one of the most important intellectual currents of the twentieth century, filling the gap between what has been written of the Russian formalism of the twenties and the French structuralism of the sixties and seventies. He records the evolution within the Prague Linguistic Circle of those theories which concern literature's change in time and the place of literature in society. In doing so, he reveals how the work of the Prague Linguistic Circle in the years 1928 to 1946 vindicate structuralism against its critics' charges that the structuralist approach—in linguistics, literary theory, film studies, and related fields—is inherently unhistorical. Overcoming this apparent methodological impasse was the main challenge confronted by the scholars of the Prague School–Roman Jakobson and Jan Mukarovsky, in particular."