1. A small group of linguists based in Geneva at the turn of the twentieth century. The most prominent figure was Saussure, Ferdinand de, whose work on the linguistic sign was a vital precursor to the founding of both structuralism and semiotics. Saussureâs contribution to scholarship might never have been known were it not for the efforts of his former students, and fellow members of the Geneva School, Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye. It was they who transformed incomplete lecture notes into the posthumously published Cours de linguistique gĂ©nĂ©rale (1916), translated as Course in General Linguistics (1959), upon which Saussureâs lasting fame rests. 2. A small group of literary scholars using a combination of phenomenology (inspired by the work Husserl, Edmund) and Russian Formalism to analyse the ontology of literature as a specific art form and affective experience. The text was treated as the realization of the authorâs consciousness and the critics sought its deep structure by looking for and interpreting recurrent images and symbolic patterns. All material facts, such as the biography of the author, or the historical context, were set aside as extraneous. Its core membership consisted of Georges Poulet, Jean-Pierre Richard, Marcel Raymond, and Jean Starobinski. American literary critic Miller, J. Hillis was influenced by their approach. Further Reading: T. Eagleton Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983).