Home > Yury Tynyanov

1 Life and work

Tynyanov was an authority on Pushkin and an important member of the Russian Formalist school.

In 1928, together with the linguist Roman Jakobson, he published a famous work titled Theses on Language, a predecessor to structuralism, which could be summarised in the following manner (from [1]):

1. Literary science had to have a firm theoretical basis and an accurate terminology.
2. The structural laws of a specific field of literature had to be established before it was related to other fields.
3. The evolution of literature must be studied as a system. All evidence, whether literary or non-literary must be analysed functionally.
4. The distinction between synchrony and diachrony was useful for the study of literature as for language, uncovering systems at each separate stage of development. But the history of systems is also a system; each synchronic system has its own past and future as part of its structure. Therefore the distinction should not be preserved beyond its usefulness.
5. A synchronic system is not a mere agglomerate of contemporaneous phenomena catalogued. 'Systems' mean hierarchical organisation.
6. The distinction between langue and parole, taken from linguistics, deserves to be developed for literature in order to reveal the principles underlying the relationship between the individual utterance and a prevailing complex of norms.
7. The analysis of the structural laws of literature should lead to the setting up of a limited number of structural types and evolutionary laws governing those types.
8. The discovery of the 'immanent laws' of a genre allows one to describe an evolutionary step, but not to explain why this step has been taken by literature and not another. Here the literary must be related to the relevant non-literary facts to find further laws, a 'system of systems'. But still the immanent laws of the individual work had to be enunciated first.

Tynyanov also wrote historical novelA novel is a long or extended work of fiction written in prose, usually in the form of a story. It is longer and more complex than a short story or novella (ie. 40,000+ words), and it is not bound by the restrictions of plays and poetry. The word "novel"s, and applied his theories to many of his fictional works.

He died of multiple sclerosisMultiple sclerosis MS is a demyelinating disease, a non-contagious chronic autoimmune disorder of the central nervous system which can present with a variety of neurological symptoms occurring in attacks or slowly progressing over time. It has no cure yet.

2 Selected Bibliography

2.1 (in English)

Works by Yury Tynyanov

• Formalist theory, translated by L.M. O'Toole and Ann Shukman ( 1977For the album by Ash, see 1977 (album). Events January 1 First woman Episcopal priest ordained January 6 EMI sacks the Sex Pistols January 18 Scientists identify a previously unknown bacterium as the cause of the mysterious " legionnaire's disease" Januar)
• Lieutenant Kije / Young Vitushishnikov: Two Novellas (Eridanos Library, No. 20), translated by Mirra Ginsburg ( 1990Events January January 3 Former leader of Panama Manuel Noriega surrenders to American forces. January 7 The Leaning Tower of Pisa is closed to the public due to safety concerns. January 9 Lt Gen Bazilio Olara Okello The man who led the coup aginst Dr Apo)

Works edited by Yury Tynyanov

• Russian Prose, edited by Boris Mikhailovich Eikhenbaum and Yury Tynyanov, translated by Ray Parrot ( 19851985 is a common year starting on Tuesday. Events January events January 1 Creation of the Internet's Domain Name System. January 17 British Telecom annouces they are going to abolish the famous red telephone boxes. January 23 A debate in the House of Lor)