ABSTRACT
The history of twentieth-century literary studies went from informal circles to a research school, only to fall apart into circles again. The scholars represented the younger generation and their work was determined not by schools but rather by informal circles. The widely renowned and recognized Polish School of structuralism was undoubtedly the direct inheritor of the formalistically oriented student circles of the interwar period. Ironically, the later seat of the Polish structuralist school in the first decade of its existence was officially treated as the workshop of Polish Marxism. The further development of the Institute of Literary Research demonstrated clearly that the ideas of formal circles and structural school did not disappear completely and it contributed to the achievements of Polish structuralism of the second wave. The political upheaval greatly influenced the literary studies in Poland, particularly the structuralist school, which was regarded as ideologically foreign and antagonistic toward official Marxism.
