Metatheatre: a theoretical

incursion
4There is a corpus of modernist dramatic works, epitomized by those of Brecht and Pirandello, that
responds to what one can expect from a theatre that comes preceded by the prefix ‘meta’: self-
reflectivity, a critical relationship to previous models and, even though it is a very generic idea,
complexity. The distinction between self-referential and mimetic dramaturgies is, in the final instance,
a question of theatrical levels rather than an absolute separation of two irreconcilable essences. In this
respect, William Egginton observes how “there can be no theater that is not already a metatheater, in
that in the instant a distinction is recognized between a real space and another, imaginary one that
mirrors it, that very distinction becomes an element to be incorporated as another distinction in the
imaginary space’s work of mimesis” (How 74). It is not by accident that scholars such as Elinor Fuchs,
Martin Puchner, and Alan Ackerman, as well as Egginton himself, have advocated in recent years the
adoption of the term ‘theatrical’ or ‘theatricalist’ in lieu of the more popular ‘metatheatrical.’ Be it
through the mediating presence of asides, prologues and choruses, the incorporation of puppets
commenting on the stage action, or the adoption of theatrical traditions that foreground the artificial
nature of the stage (commedia dell’arte, Chinese and Japanese classic theatres), there is no need to
present a play within a play in order to emphasize the artificiality of the theatrical stage. But, what is
the origin of the “meta” prefix in the field of theatre studies? The idea of metatheatre or metaplay first
appeared in Lionel Abel’s collection of essays Metatheatre, published in 1963. Abel coins this term to
define “a comparatively philosophic form of drama” (v) characterized by its self-conscious nature. In
contrast to the catharsis-oriented Greek tragedy, Abel argues, the hero in the works of Shakespeare,
Cervantes, and Calderón remains “conscious of the part he himself plays in constructing the drama
that unfolds around him” (167). The device of the play within a play, so important in the Baroque, is
present in works such as Hamlet or Life is a Dream, yet Abel indicates that the concept of metatheatre
goes beyond the use of this specific device:

the plays I am pointing at do have a common character: all of them are theatre pieces about life seen as
already theatricalized. By this I mean that the persons appearing on the stage in these plays are there not
simply because they were caught by the playwright in dramatic postures as a camera might catch them, but
because they themselves knew they were dramatic before the playwright took note of them. What
dramatized them originally? Myth, legend, past literature, they themselves. . . unlike figures in tragedy, they
are aware of their own theatricality. (134-135)

5The notion of metatheatre is not exclusive to one artistic period. Abel applies it to the self-reflexive
dramaturgies of such modern playwrights as Pirandello, Genet, and Brecht. At the core of Abel’s
theoretical edifice stands his argumentation about the impossibility of tragedy in baroque and modern
drama due to the “theatricalized,” self-referential condition of these two periods. One of the great
advantages of the concept of metatheatre is the fact that, once it has been liberated from historical
constraints, it becomes a valid analytic tool for the study of historical series. As Puchner puts it in his
preface to Abel’s collection, “Nineteenth-century realism and naturalism thus are for modern drama
what Greek tragedy is for baroque drama, namely, the “realist” precursor of the later self-absorbed
metatheatre” (Introduction 14).

 1 See Puchner’s introduction to Abel’s Tragedy and Metatheatre 1-4. As Puchner observes, it is in th (...)

6Abel’s idea of metatheatre can be traced back to the early 1960s, when the prefix “meta” enjoyed
extraordinary prominence among art critics thanks to Clement Greenberg’s theorizations of abstract
painting.1 Abel was also responding to a parallel movement that took place in the area of literary
theory in the wake of Jakobson’s famous study on the six functions of language. As it is well known,
Jakobson presented his model of six functions of language at the 1958 Indiana Conference on Style.
His paper “Linguistics and Poetics” was published two years later in the proceedings Style in
Language, edited by Thomas A. Sebeok, and any further commentary about its influence on twentieth-
century literary theory would be redundant here. In the pages to follow, I propose a historical
reconstruction of Jakobson’s model in order to demonstrate how his 1958 classification descends from
the tradition of the Prague School (a research group he cofounded in 1926), and to what extent it
diverges from the Prague School project of interartistic semiotics. In particular, I argue that, by
rendering Mukařovský’s original aesthetic function as the poetic function, Jakobson closes the door to
the inclusion of social and ideological phenomena in the realm of literary criticism.

7Jakobson’s six elements of verbal communication are the following (I am reproducing here the
graphic arrangement presented in “Linguistic and Poetics”):

CONTEXT
ADDRESSER MESSAGE ADDRESEE
CONTACT
CODE

8And the functions corresponding to these six factors are:

REFERENTIAL
EMOTIVE POETIC CONATIVE
PHATIC
METALINGUAL

9In strict terms, only two of Jakobson’s functions can be considered new contributions. More exactly,
it is only the case of the metalingual function, for the concept of the phatic function is derived from
Bronislaw Malinowski’s anthropological research, as well as the transmission model of communication
developed by Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver in the 1940s. In “Linguistics and Poetics,” Jakobson
defines the metalingual function as the one that predominates “Whenever the addresser and/or the
addressee need to check up whether they use the same code” (69). Metalingual operations are
present in our everyday exchanges, and their importance is particularly visible in the processes of
language learning. My claim is that the metalingual function cannot be made equal to metatheatre due
to the fact that there is no position of outsideness in theatre that can be compared to the abstract
patterns of utterances such as “The word “apple” has five letters” or “Could you rephrase what you
just said?”. Even in the case of Brecht’s ‘epic’ devices, what occurs is a shift of attention to the
theatrical conventions—a focus on the message itself, in linguistic terms—rather than a description of
the code from an outside position.

10If the metalingual function is not the linguistic equivalent of metatheatre (with all the connotations
of self-awareness, self-reflexivity, etc., present in the latter), the most plausible solution would seem
to be the adoption of Jakobson’s poetic function. The substitution of the poetic for the metalingual
function, however, does not produce a totally satisfactory solution either. In order to prove the
insufficiency of Jakobson’s terminology, I propose a close reading of the definition of the poetic
function in “Linguistics and Poetics”:

The set (Einstellung) toward the message as such, focus on the message for its own sake, is the POETIC
function of language. The poetic function is not the sole function of verbal art but only its dominant,
determining function, whereas in all other verbal activities it acts as a subsidiary, accessory constituent. This
function, by promoting the palpability of signs, deepens the fundamental dichotomy of signs and objects.
(69-70)

11Jakobson became familiar with the concepts of Einstellung (set, orientation) and dominant in the
early 1920s, when he was one of the most active members of the so-called Russian formalist school.
The idea of palpability can also be traced back to these years, since it is a translation of oščutimost’, a
term Shklovsky coined to describe the consequences of deautomatizing effects. The formalist origin of
these three concepts demonstrates the existence of multiple theoretical layers in Jakobson’s famous
model. In addition, his talk of “the fundamental dichotomy of signs and objects” is evidence of the
legacy of the Prague School, an intellectual endeavor he joined in 1926 as one of the founding
members of the Prague Circle. This dichotomy of signs and objects is central to my argumentation, as
I will show later, but there are other aspects of the poetic function that deserve special attention now.
I am referring to the very use of the adjective “poetic,” a terminological decision that limits its range
of application to the realm of verbal art. Why does Jakobson restrict his analysis to linguistic
materials? In 1958, when he delivers his paper at Indiana, Jakobson is especially interested in the
development of a “poetry grammar.” Having arrived in the United States in the early 1940s, he
devoted himself exclusively to linguistic research for more than a decade—it is in this period that he
writes his famous paper on aphasic disturbances. Then, when he returns to literary studies in 1958, he
is convinced of the existence of an empirical criterion that demonstrates the existence of the poetic
function. It consists, as he puts it in “Linguistics and Poetics,” in the projection of “the principle of
equivalence from the axis of selection into the axis of combination” (71, his emphasis).

12Leaving aside the phatic and metalingual functions, incorporated by Jakobson to his 1958 model of
communication, the other four functions are known to Prague scholars as early as the mid-1930s. The
key difference here is that, instead of a poetic function, Mukařovský speaks of a multivalent aesthetic
function. Jakobson himself adopts this terminology in his Prague years, as can be inferred from “The
Dominant,” originally a lecture he delivered in 1935. To prove my statement, I will simply quote two
brief excerpts from “The Dominant”:

In the referential function, the sign has a minimal internal connection with the designated object, and
therefore the sign in itself carries only a minimal importance. (44)

a poetic work cannot be defined as a work fulfilling neither an exclusively aesthetic function nor an aesthetic
function along with other functions; rather, a poetic work is defined as a verbal message whose aesthetic
function is its dominant. (43)

13The first excerpt anticipates Jakobson’s theorization of the relation between sign and reality; in the
second excerpt, one can see how Jakobson speaks of the aesthetic function even when the work in
question pertains to the realm of verbal art (“a poetic work is defined as a verbal message whose
aesthetic function is its dominant”). It is evident how, in the context of the Prague School comparative
semiotics of art, the aesthetic function appears as a more encompassing concept than Jakobson’s later
poetic function. Therefore, if one proceeds in accordance with this wider approach and substitutes the
aesthetic for the poetic function, the result is the following chart of artistic—not only linguistic—
functions:

REFERENTIAL
EMOTIVE AESTHETIC CONATIVE

14We thus arrive at a four-function model that can also be rendered in terms of 3 + 1: three
communicative functions plus one aesthetic function. The main precedent for this hybrid scheme is
Karl Bühler’s organon model of language, published by the German psychologist and linguist in 1934.
In his Sprachtheorie, Bühler distinguishes three functions of
language: Darstellung(presentation), Ausdruck (expression), and Appell (appeal). These three
functions correspond to the three elements of verbal communication and, in consequence, are always
present in the communicational exchange. The functions do not exclude each other and, depending on
the predominant orientation of the speech, one can speak of an emphasis on the referred object
(presentation), the speaking subject (expression) or the utterance’s recipient (appeal).
Bühler’s Sprachtheorie takes everyday verbal communication as the basic, non-marked situation of
analysis, a move that constitutes a radical departure from the practice of the philosophers of
language, philologists and linguists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

15Bühler’s research is directly relevant to the evolution of Prague School semiotics because his
organon model situates language in an intersubjective paradigm, therefore compensating for the
limitations of Husserl’s phenomenology (Mukařovský’s most direct philosophical influence). For, in
contrast to Bühler’s model, Husserl confines language to the inner realm of expression. Husserl
distinguishes between two types of signs: expressions and indications. As Peter Steiner explains,
indications, for Husserl, are merely contextual signs, while “the true realm of expressions is the
solitary mental life, where words do not indicate because their meaning is directly “present” in the
subject’s consciousness” (“In Defense” 416). Very different from Husserl’s description, Bühler’s shifts
the attention to the use of verbal signs in a contextual social interaction, and signals the path for
 Mukařovský’s later incorporation of social aspects into a comprehensive semiotic theory. After
reviewing the terminology in Bühler’s organon, the group of four artistic functions appears as follows:

PRESENTATIONAL
(Darstellung)
EMOTIVE / AESTHETIC CONATIVE / APPELLATIVE
EXPRESSIVE

16In Mukařovský’s own account, “As a presentation (Darstellung) the linguistic sign functions vis-à-vis
the reality signified by it; as an expression it appears in relation to the speaking subject; as an appeal
it is addressed to the perceiving subject” (“Poetic Designation” 67-8). The idea of a presentational
function, often translated (incorrectly) into English as “referential,” highlights the capacity of the sign
to produce realities (world-creating signs). This creative facet is less explicit when the concept is
translated as referential function, as Jakobson does in “Linguistics and Poetics.” With respect to the
expressive and appellative functions, terms equivalent to the emotive and conative functions in
Jakobson’s model, the difference is not substantial.

17Mukařovský expands upon Bühler’s Sprachtheorie by conceptualizing a fourth function, the

aesthetic, which brings to the fore the structural components of the artistic work. This idea of an
“orientation toward the expression itself,” an expression that Mukařovský uses in several of his essays
of the 1930s, has been too often misunderstood as a simple translation of the old principle of art for
art’s sake. Yet what Mukařovský argues is precisely the opposite of this, for it is due to its aesthetic
orientation that the work of art is able to weaken the transparent relation between signs and reality.
The illusion of transparency that is inherent to realist-naturalist drama (theatre as a slice of life)
epitomizes the tendency toward informational redundancy or, to put it in linguistic terms,
lexicalization. Contrary to this, the presence of non-mimetic codes in modernist theatre foregrounds
the fact that the stage is not a passive copy of external reality, but a space that now questions
‘lexicalized’ identities and clears the ground for new social and ethical evaluations.

In lieu of conclusion
18Once these terminological changes are implemented, the circle seems finally closed, and Jakobson’s
model can be now traced back to the four-function model developed by Bühler and Mukařovský in the
1930s. The existence of an aesthetic rather than a (linguistically determined) poetic function,
however, does not totally resolve the question of how aesthetic and non-aesthetic elements interact in
the history of art. This is something that goes well beyond the limits of the present essay. As a final
note, I would like to mention Mukařovský’s own struggle with the ambivalent notion of the aesthetic
function

19At first glance, it seems a safe move to define the aesthetic function as the predominant one in
artistic realms such as literature, sculpture, etc. Nonetheless, Mukařovský denounces the limitations of
this theoretical stance when it comes to explaining the presence of the aesthetic function in the
society of his time:

as soon as we go beyond the realm of art, difficulties arise. On the one hand, we continually find ourselves
attempting to consider the aesthetic function as something secondary which may exist but is not necessary;
on the other hand, the aesthetic function compels our attention outside of art so frequently, turns up in so
many of the most varied manifestations of life, and even appears as an essential component of habitation,
dress, social intercourse, and so forth, that we must think about its role in the overall organization of the
world. (“The Place” 31)

 2 In “The Place of the Aesthetic Function,” Mukařovský gives the example of the goldsmith’s and the (...)

20Writing in 1942, Mukařovský finds himself needing to explain the particular nature of the aesthetic
function in an epoch when “life outside of art has become very strongly aestheticized” (“The Place”
32), a statement very similar to Benjamin’s well-known words on the fascist aestheticization of
 politics. In fact, Mukařovský refers to the “aestheticization of physical culture” (32) as one example of
the strong presence of the aesthetic function outside art.2

21Despite their antithetical conditions, the crisscrossing of the practical and the aesthetic functions is
frequent both in art and in everyday life. In fact, Mukařovský notes, the art of theatre constitutes a
paradigmatic case of the practical function appearing “frequently coupled with, indeed even blended
with, the aesthetic” (“The Place” 47). In “Significance of Aesthetics,” a paper also written in 1942,
Mukařovský reformulates the dichotomy practical/aesthetic function in terms that echo Shklovsky’s
concept of ostranenie:

An absolute restriction to the practical attitude, of course, would unmistakably lead eventually to total
automatization, to a restriction of attention to already obtained and exploited aspects. Only the aesthetic
function can preserve for man vis-à-vis the universe the position of a foreigner who keeps coming to
unknown regions with fresh and keen attention, who is constantly aware of himself because he is projecting
himself into the surrounding reality and is constantly aware of the surrounding reality because he measures
it with himself. (“Significance” 22)

 3 As Michael Quinn notes, Mukařovský constructs the category of the aesthetic function “negatively, (...)

22Mukařovský’s theory of functions is not free from contradictions, especially when it comes to
codifying a function, such as the aesthetic, which can only be defined in negative terms. 3The
unresolved aspects of Mukařovský’s model have to be explained, at least in part, by the hostile
historical conditions of his late structuralist thought, which coincides with the German occupation of
Prague. And Mukařovský would never resume his research on this issue after War World II, as he had
renounced structuralism in favor of Marxism in order to keep his professorship at the Charles
University of Prague. Despite its unfinished condition, Mukařovský’s functional division is of particular
value when applied to modernism, a period characterized by the blending of the two functions studied
by the Czech scholar.