Philology today is a whole branch of knowledge that unites humanitarian linguistics, literary studies, history, and other disciplines related to words, texts, and speech in one way or another. This includes literary studies, semiotics, cultural studies, textology, paleography, and folklore studies. Philology explores the spiritual essence of human culture, its historical development.
In the book by a renowned philologist and historian, outstanding linguists, literary scholars, and folklorists from Russia and the world are discussed, who made the most significant contributions to the development of philological science. The book provides biographies and outlines of the scientific activities of Nicolas Boualodépre, the Brothers Grimm, Vladimir Dal and Alexander Potebnja, Ferdinand de Saussure and Franz Boas, Alexei Shakhmatov and Nikolai Marr, Eduard Sapir and Roland Barthes, Boris Eikhenbaum and Viktor Shklovsky, Yuri Tynianov and Viktor Zhirmunsky, Yuri Lotman and Yuri Knorozov, Evgeny Polivanov and Vladimir Vinogradov, Dmitry Likhachev and Andre Martine, Benjamin Whorf and Vittorio Strada, and many other scholars.