Category Archives: Roman Jakobson

Benveniste and the Linguistic Circle of Prague

Posted on January 19, 2025 by stuartelden

There are some good histories of the Linguistic Circle of Prague, which met in the years before the Second World War, and which included Russian scholars as well as ones from Czechoslovakia. Jindřich Toman’s The Magic of a Common Language is a particularly … Continue reading →

Posted in Antoine Meillet, Emile Benveniste, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Roman Jakobson, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 11 Comments

Books received – Grant, Littleton, François, Bowd & Clayton, Nobus, Ariès, Linear B and the Prague Linguistic Circle

Posted on January 4, 2025 by stuartelden

Some books received in recompense for review work… … and some second-hand ones – a couple by Philippe Ariès, some about the decipherment of Linear B, and about the Prague Linguistic Circle. Most of these relate in some way to … Continue reading →

Posted in Jacques Lacan, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Roman Jakobson | Leave a comment

Indo-European Thought in Twentieth-Century France update 25: Benveniste’s teaching, a talk at St Andrews, Tzvetan Todorov, Roman Jakobson, and some archival work in Paris and Oxford

Posted on December 20, 2024 by stuartelden

I’m overdue an update on this project, but while I’ve been working hard, I haven’t felt there has been much to say until now. I’ve also had some further health problems, leading to another shorter stay in hospital and the … Continue reading →

Posted in Alexandre Koyré, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Michel Foucault, Roman Jakobson | 3 Comments

Indo-European Thought in Twentieth-Century France update 23: Emile Benveniste and Georges Dumézil at the Collège de France, and an article on Alexandre Koyré

Posted on September 9, 2024 by stuartelden

The chapter I’m currently working on for the Mapping Indo-European Thought project is a study of the two decades Benveniste and Dumézil were teaching in parallel at the Collège de France. I’ve been concentrating on Dumézil so far, but I plan to … Continue reading →

Posted in Alexandre Koyré, Emile Benveniste, Georges Canguilhem, Georges Dumézil, Michel Foucault, Roman Jakobson, The Archaeology of Foucault, Uncategorized, William Shakespeare | 1 Comment

Claude Lévi-Strauss: the Fondation Loubat lectures 

Posted on May 18, 2023 by stuartelden

Update August 2025: A revised and expanded version of this post is here, as part of the ‘Sunday Histories’ series. In the 1949-50 academic year, Claude Lévi-Strauss gave the Fondation Loubat lectures at the Collège de France. Although he was trying … Continue reading →

Posted in Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roman Jakobson, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

James McElvenny (ed.), The Limits of Structuralism: Forgotten Texts in the History of Modern Linguistics – Oxford University Press, March 2023

Posted on May 12, 2023 by stuartelden

James McElvenny (ed.), The Limits of Structuralism: Forgotten Texts in the History of Modern Linguistics – Oxford University Press, March 2023 An expensive but interesting looking collection – also available on Oxford Scholarship Online. Based around seven primary texts spanning … Continue reading →

Posted in Emile Benveniste, Roman Jakobson | Leave a comment

Indo-European thought in twentieth-century France update 11: Dumézil and Charachidzé’s work on Ubykh; Lévi-Strauss and his archive; Eliade’s correspondence; Koyré’s networks; and continuing work with Dumézil’s archive

Posted on April 28, 2023 by stuartelden

My attempt with this project to keep to a broadly chronological order of working through of Georges Dumézil’s major publications (see last update) took a bit of a detour, as his 1931 book La Langue des Oubykhs led me to follow the thread … Continue reading →

Posted in Alexandre Koyré, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Italo Calvino, Jacques Lacan, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Mircea Eliade, Roman Jakobson, Umberto Eco, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Alexandre Koyré and a network of ideas

Posted on April 26, 2023 by stuartelden

In several previous projects – on Foucault, Heidegger, Canguilhem, territory – I’ve briefly mentioned the work of Alexandre Koyré. He’s coming up again in the new work in relation to Benveniste, Dumézil, Lévi-Strauss and Jakobson. Koyré introduced Lévi-Strauss to Jakobson … Continue reading →

Posted in Alexandre Koyré, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Edmund Husserl, Emile Benveniste, Georges Canguilhem, Georges Dumézil, Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, Roman Jakobson, Territory | 13 Comments

Indo-European thought project update 8: working on Barthes, Lévi-Strauss and the Mission Paul Pelliot

Posted on December 23, 2022 by stuartelden

Since the last update on this project I’ve not done quite what I intended. I had thought I’d begin working systematically through Georges Dumézil’s works in a chronological way, filling in much detail and some gaps in my previous reading. Instead I went down … Continue reading →

Posted in Aurel Stein, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Clémence Ramnoux, Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Roman Jakobson, The Archaeology of Foucault, The Early Foucault | 1 Comment

Claude Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology Zero – Polity, July 2021

Posted on January 20, 2021 by stuartelden

Claude Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology Zero – Polity, July 2021, translated by Ninon Vinsonneau and Jonathan Magidoff The original French edition of these texts was published by Seuil in 2019 as Anthropologie structurale zéro. This volume of Lévi-Strauss’s writings from 1941 … Continue reading →

Posted in Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roman Jakobson | 1 Comment