Category Archives: Roman Jakobson

Trevor Pateman on Barthes as a teacher, and attending classes by Foucault, Derrida, Lévi-Strauss and Jakobson

Posted on February 18, 2026 by stuartelden

A very interesting short piece about spending the 1971-72 academic year in Paris – Trevor Pateman, “Roland Barthes: Writer, Intellectual, and also Professor”, Barthes Studies, 2025 (open access). It briefly mentions Foucault: But Barthes’ preferences were very similar to Foucault’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Claude Lévi-Strauss, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Roman Jakobson | Leave a comment

Umberto Eco, Philosophers, Mythologists and Linguists

Posted on February 15, 2026 by stuartelden

19 February 2026 marks the 10th anniversary of the death of Umberto Eco. I only heard Eco speak once, at a book reading in October 1995 for The Island of the Day Before. Mario Vargas Llosa was the other scheduled speaker, but … Continue reading →

Posted in Claude Lévi-Strauss, Emile Benveniste, Georges Canguilhem, Georges Dumézil, Italo Calvino, Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories, The Archaeology of Foucault, Umberto Eco, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Books received – Nietzsche, Eco, Todorov, Zurn, Serres, Wheatland, Jakobson

Posted on January 28, 2026 by stuartelden

Mostly in recompense for review work for De Gruyter – the two expensive Jakobson volumes; for University of Minnesota Press – Michel Serres, Hermes I: Communication; Thomas Wheatland, The Frankfurt School in Exile; and Perry Zurn, Curiosity and Power: The … Continue reading →

Posted in Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Serres, Roman Jakobson, Umberto Eco | 1 Comment

Roland Barthes and the Question of Territory – Animals, Spaces and Sound

Posted on January 25, 2026 by stuartelden

Roland Barthes only taught at the Collège de France for a short period, from the 1976-77 academic year until shortly before his premature death in early 1980. I was drawn to his lecture courses there for my current work because he sometimes … Continue reading →

Posted in André Leroi-Gourhan, Boundaries, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Emile Benveniste, Felix Guattari, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Lacan, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Music, Noam Chomsky, Roland Barthes, Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories, Territory, Theory | 2 Comments

Claude Lévi-Strauss and Roger Caillois – Race, Games and a Ceremonial Sword

Posted on December 28, 2025 by stuartelden

Roger Caillois and Claude Lévi-Strauss both spent the war in exile from France. Lévi-Strauss had done fieldwork in Brazil in the 1930s, but when he left France he went through Martinique and was detained in Puerto Rico before going to … Continue reading →

Posted in Claude Lévi-Strauss, Georges Dumézil, Roger Caillois, Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Books received – Porshnev, Jameson, Coveney, de Menasce, Foucault, Medby, Chimisso, Blencowe, Braudel, Jakobson

Posted on December 4, 2025 by stuartelden

A few books bought recently, mostly second-hand; Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious, Cristina Chimisso, Hélène Metzger, Historian and Historiographer of the Sciences, Ingrid Medley, Arctic State Identity and Claire Blencowe, Spirits of Extraction, in recompense for review work; and Foucault’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Boris Porshnev, Fernand Braudel, Fredric Jameson, Ludwig Binswanger, Michel Foucault, Roman Jakobson, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Gordon and Tina Wasson, Slavic Studies in the Cold War, and the Hallucinogenic Mushroom

Posted on November 23, 2025 by stuartelden

R. Gordon Wasson was Vice President at the American investment bank J.P. Morgan & Co., a major supporter of Slavic Studies in the United States during the Cold War, and fascinated by hallucinogenic mushrooms.  His wife, Valentina Pavlovna Wasson was … Continue reading →

Posted in Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 6 Comments

Indo-European Thought in Twentieth-Century France update 30 – archive work in Paris, Bern and Cambridge, MA, and Benveniste’s library

Posted on November 12, 2025 by stuartelden

The formal end of the Leverhulme major research fellowship for the Indo-European thought project was at the end of September, but I have a no-cost extension until the end of January. This is invaluable, and is effectively to extend the grant for … Continue reading →

Posted in Étienne Wolff, Claude Lévi-Strauss, David Harvey, Emile Benveniste, Ernst Kantorowicz, Erwin Panofsky, Georges Bataille, Georges Canguilhem, Georges Dumézil, Jacques Derrida, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Vladimir Nabokov’s original and unpublished translation of The Discourse of Igor’s Campaign; and Roman Jakobson’s enduring wish to complete his English edition

Posted on November 9, 2025 by stuartelden

In two previous pieces in the ‘Sunday Histories’ series, I have discussed the planned but unrealised collaboration between Vladimir Nabokov and Roman Jakobson on an edition and translation of “The Song of Igor”, an old Russian poem of the 12th century. Jakobson had … Continue reading →

Posted in Georges Dumézil, Mircea Eliade, Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized, Vladimir Nabokov | 4 Comments

Roman Jakobson’s paper to The First World Conference on Yiddish Studies, 1958: “The Languages of the Diaspora as a Particular Linguistic Problem”

Posted on October 26, 2025 by stuartelden

In an earlier piece in the ‘Sunday Histories’ series, I discussed the work Roman Jakobson did for Franz Boas on the Paleo-Siberian and Aleutian material at the New York Public Library. In his initial time in the United States, as a refugee from … Continue reading →

Posted in Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories | 3 Comments