Literary semiotics in the early works of Harry Mathews

Abstract

P·redkl¶adan¶a pr¶ace se zab¶yv¶a ran¶ymi pracemi americk¶eho spiso- vatele Harryho Mathewse, speci¶aln·e liter¶arn¶ s¶emiotikou Mathewsova rom¶anu The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium. Pr¶ace t¶e·z pojedn¶av¶a o vztahu Math- ewse k avantgardn¶mu seskupen¶ Oulipo (Ouvroir de litt¶erature potentielle) a jejich spole·cn¶eho projektu form¶aln¶ho experimentov¶an¶. K \potenci¶aln¶ li- teratu·re," zpracov¶avan¶e jako funkce znakov¶ych syst¶emu, se p·ristupuje po- moc¶ komparativn¶ anal¶yzy struktur a vztahu vyskytuj¶c¶ch se ve zd¶anliv·e nepropojen¶ych matematick¶ych disciplin¶ach.

This thesis is concerned with the early works of American novelist Harry Mathews { in particular the literary semiotics of Mathews' The Sink- ing of the Odradek Stadium. The work also sets out to deal with Mathews' relationship to the avant-garde collective Oulipo (Ouvroir de Litt¶erature Po- tentielle/Workshop for Potential Literature) and the collective's project of formal experimentation. \Potential literature," treated as a function of sign systems, is approached through a comparative analysis of structures and re- lations found in seemingly disconnected branches of mathematics.