Lotman Structure Literary Semiotics Research

As a famous Russian literal theorist and symbolist in the 20th century, Yury Mikhailovich Lotman established his own structural literal semiotics creatively, and made so much great contribution to this field that it has started to catch attention internationally, and a new school-Tartu Semiotic School has taken shape with him as the driving force.With careful studies of his main theoretical works such as Lectures on Structural Poetics and The Structure of Artistic Text in the coordinates of literal theoretical development in Russia and the West, this thesis aims to explain and analyze the core of Lotman's literal theories. It is argued in this thesis that the starting point of Lotman's theory is that art is regarded as a special language, which is a kind of second simulated system based on natural language. Given art as a linguistic system, Lotman tries to explain it with linguistic approaches. The core of his theory is that a holistic, systematic methodology is adopted to explain texts, which are studied as a whole semiotic system. Therefore, the relations between literal phenomena and elements, the interaction between the whole system and internal components, are demonstrated, and a unity of content and form of the artistic creations is achieved successfully. He maintains that the changes in textual structure directly determine its content and meaning, so the creation of the meaning of any literal works should be traced back to the internal relations between elements in the wholeness of combination of content and form. Guided by this doctrine, the thesis continues to track his thought down in history to find its root-its heritage from and revision of the Russian formalism, in terms of research perspectives and methodology. The third part of the thesis focused on the inspiration the Lotman's theories provide. A review of the development of the western literal criticism in the second half of the 19th century and the 20th reveals the century-long "critical cycle", which is broken by Lotman through a shift from dualism to pluralism as the base for his innovation. It is stressed in this paper that the theoretical combination of formalistic criticism and social and historical criticism is also a combination of analysis of texts' form and their cultural contexts. His attempt to incorporate the two critical approaches indicates a path with both western and Chinese characteristics, which is an important feature of Lotman methodology.Through studies of Lotman's theories, the thesis points out the contribution Lotman and his followers made to western literal theories and criticism, locates him in this field, and reveals his originality in critical pattern and analytical methods. His contribution has already gone beyond the border of literal theory, and it is significant to the reconstruction of the methodology of the whole humanities studies.