Original scientific paper

Labyrinth of language by Julio Cortázar

Nataša Jovović ; University of Montenegro - Faculty of Philology

Abstract

This essay examines a specific relation to language and the concept of a language-game in Julio Cortázar’s (1914−1984) post-modern novel Hopscotch (1963), whereby the notion of a language-game is related to the linguistic paradigm of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889−1951) explained in his famous work Philosophical Investigations (Philosophische Untersuchungen, 1953). It is demonstrated that the principle of a language-game is Cortázar’s dominant narrative mechanism using numerous comparisons with Wittgenstein’s attitudes towards language and applying his theory in a selected hypertext.
“Artistic structure” is built on a “language experiment”, and therefore there is no room for expected poetic principles, since Cortázar’s language expression has no space left for the primary meanings of lexemes, the usual order of sentence constituents, and, in general, relations based on something expected. Language triggers destructive mechanisms that result in unusual syntax, oxymoron constructions, expressive phraseology, and extremely derived semantic nuances that can be “grasped” to some extent by the reader’s readiness to embark on the search for cognition precisely through the critique of language. That brings us to the relation with a shift that got manifested in the philosophy of language precisely at the time when Kant’s mentalist critique, the critique of cognition, turned into Wittgenstein’s critique of meaning.

Keywords

Julio Cortázar; Hopscotch; Ludwig Wittgenstein; Philosophical Investigations; language-game

Hrčak ID:

247751

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/247751

Publication date:

13.12.2020.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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