In this first book-length study of Czech structuralism and semiotics in English, F. W. Galan explores one of the most important intellectual currents of the twentieth century, filling the gap between what has been written of the Russian formalism of the twenties and the French structuralism of the sixties and seventies. He records the evolution within the Prague Linguistic Circle of those theories which concern literature's change in time and the place of literature in society. In doing so, he reveals how the work of the Prague Linguistic Circle in the years 1928 to 1946 vindicate structuralism against its critics' charges that the structuralist approach—in linguistics, literary theory, film studies, and related fields—is inherently unhistorical. Overcoming this apparent methodological impasse was the main challenge confronted by the scholars of the Prague School–Roman Jakobson and Jan Mukarovsky, in particular.

F. W. Galan (1947–1992) was Professor of Comparative Literature and Slavic Languages and Literatures at Vanderbilt University.

• Preface
• A Note on Translation
• Abbreviations
• 1. A Brief Introduction
• 2. Language Diachrony and Literary Evolution
• 3. An Attempt at a Historical Ordering of Poetic Structure
• 4. The Semiotic Reformulation
• 5. Readers’ Reception History and the Individual Poetic Talent
• 6. A Summary Conclusion
• Appendix 1. A List of Lectures on Poetics, Aesthetics and Semiotics Given in the Prague Linguistic Circle, 1926–1948
• Appendix 2. A List of Secondary and Related Sources
• Index