From the Prehistory of Soviet Works on Structural Poetics

Abstract

I. Introduction: In recent years, many scholars have been examining questions of the modeling of various aspects of human intellectual activity. Among other things, they have been discussing the possibility of the artificial reproduction of psychic and mental functions which are still far from having been precisely described. Elucidating the structure of humanistic disciplines such as linguistics, musicology, psychology, sociology, and so forth represents an interesting task with important possibilities for the future. Unfortunately, while many people consider even a problem as intricate as the creation of highly complex living beings to have been basically solved, it is still widely believed that art and literature cannot be formalized and that in general they are somehow inherently different from everything else.