Moskiewskie Koło Lingwistyczne: zapomniane początki nowoczesnego literaturoznawstwa teoretycznego

The aim of the paper is to present the history of the Moscow Linguistic Circle whose membershave laid the foundations for themodern, linguistic-oriented literary theory since 1915. The goal of the thesis is to follow the process of establishing the literary theory as an autonomous scientific discipline with its specific research subject, appropriate tools, and terminology. The case of the Circle illustrates that the scientific intuitions of young scholars from Moscow were often ahead of many trends in the twentieth century humanities (e.g. structuralism, statistical poetics, urban studies, sociolinguistics). For this reason the discussion on the intellectual heritage of the Moscow Linguistic Circle is also the reinterpretation of the history of the modern literary theory – necessary in the light of the available, yet poorly recognized archival documents.