In the NYU archives today, I read the typescript of a lecture given by Edmund Leach about Roman Jakobson at the New York Institute for the Humanities, and wondered if it had been published. One better, the audio recording of this lecture was made available on the New Books Network just a couple of years ago.

Edmund Leach on Roman Jakobson’s Contributions to Linguistics

The lecture says it is from 1982, but since Leach says in the lecture that Jakobson died in July of “last year”, it must date from 1983, and the typescript suggests February.

In this episode from the Institute’s Vault, we hear the 1982 Gallatin Lecture, in which Sir Edmund Leach discussed the work of Roman Jakobson, who he met in 1960, at Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. 

Jakobson was one of the pioneers of structural linguistics, and a major influence on Claude Levi-Strauss and Roland Barthes. He taught at Harvard from 1940 until his retirement in 1967. Leach was a British social anthropologist, and the provost of King’s College, Cambridge from 1966 to 1979.

More lectures from the Institute of Humanities vault are here.