The Structure of Artistic Text

Yuri Mikhailovich Lotman (1922 – 1993) was a prominent Soviet literary critic and cultural historian, one of the founders of the Tartu-Moscow semiotic school. In his extensive study "The Structure of Artistic Text," he examines art through the lens of sign systems, and deconstructs the concept of "text" into its smallest components. Lotman's close examination includes the figurative meanings of symbols and signs, rules of encoding and composition, as well as the issues related to characters.