27

What are the links between formalism and structuralism? This article suggests that all theories are also a narration that can be analyzed based on the context of their development and the journey of their authors — Roman Jakobson, René Wellek, Jan Mukařovský, followed by the young generation of the 1960s. The narrative does not always follow a clear and continuous line; when studying this type of narrative construction, one seizes mutations, ruptures, and silences. The article looks at these silences, showing that they may be meaningful. In this analysis of the transfers of knowledge between the formalist and the structuralist movements, the author looks at the reception of these theories and brings out the clichés that may have conveyed certain representations, often of an ideological nature, as well as the gaps which, at the time, characterized Western and Czechoslovak readings of these theories and thus the links between them.