Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européennes

Although Ferdinand de Saussure published only one book, Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européennes (Memoir on the Original System of Vowels in the Indo-European Languages) in 1879, a later reconstruction of notes from his lectures by two of his students would shape all of literary theory for much of the twentieth century. When Jacques Lacan read Freud through Saussure's linguistic theories of the sign, signified, and signifier, he made Saussure's structuralist theories, already crucial in the field of linguistics, important concepts for psychoanalysts, and later literary theorists.