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The article describes the legacy of the Warsaw Circle which was active during the second half of the 1930s and whose members included, among others, Stefan Żółkiewski, Kazimerz Budzyk, Franciszek Siedlecki and Dawid Hopensztand. It focuses mainly on the most characteristic feature of Polish inter-war structuralism, namely the notion of methodological formalism, which consists in examining the “logical syntax” of a science which is prior to the conveyance of networks of notions and empirical data rooted in theories. How this “formalism” operates is demonstrated with Hopensztand’s model of free indirect speech and satirical discourse in which a solid network of a priori notions allows for daring leaps between various areas of human experience. This model has regained currency in the context of present-day literary studies, which strive to breach the boundaries between the literary and the social while at the same time expressing a growing interest in discoveries in the life sciences.