“System” and “structure” as terms and concepts in formalist and structuralist parlance
“System” and “structure” as terms and concepts in formalist and structuralist parlance

Summary/Abstract: This paper explores the evolution of the terms “system” and “structure” as applied to literature and art by Russian formalists (Yuri Tynianov) and (para)formalist phenomenologists (Gustav Shpet), and subsequent structuralist theorists in Prague (Roman Jakobson, Jan Mukařovský) and Tartu (Juri Lotman) from the 1920s to the 1980s. Initially favoured by Petrograd formalists, the term “system” gradually shared space with “structure”, introduced by Shpet in 1923 and embraced by his followers at the Moscow Linguistic Circle and the State Academy of Artistic Sciences. In 1928, Jakobson, collaborating with Tynianov in Prague, adopted both terms as synonyms but eschewed “system” in his post-1929 works. For Mukařovský, the relations between the elements in a structure create dialectic contradictions. These shifts paved the way for Lotman’s “metaleptic conversion” of system and structure. On the one hand, according to Lotman, each structure (= text) is a realization of more than one system (= language); on the other hand, a structure (= text) birthed from a system (= language) transmutes into a system in itself, consequently giving rise to new structures (= texts).

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