What is a polysystem?

Before explaining Even-Zohar's concept of the polysystem, it is necessary to look at the Russian Formalist, or more specifically Jurij Tynjanov's, concept of literary systems. The Formalist approach was essentially one that approached a literary text as dissociated from its context and viewed literary history as a linear tradition. This meant that Formalists looked at the literary work as an entity in itself, not as a product of the time and place from which it comes. Tynjanov argued that this approach is not possible or advisable and that works will have to be studied as part of the contexts in which they are produced. Formalism believed in the ‘literariness' of a work, or the innovative qualities that make that work unique. Tynjanov's question was how one could figure out innovation in a work if one did not know the tradition. In order to explain this relationship, he brought in the concept of ‘system' – according to this, literary traditions, genres, or even a literary work formed different systems working in dialectical relation to each other. As Gentzler puts it, “Literary traditions composed different systems, literary genres formed systems, a literary work itself was also a unique system, and the entire social order comprised another system, all of which were interrelated, “dialectically” interacting with each other, and conditioning how any specific formal element could function” (112).

Even-Zohar worked further with this theory of systems. He called the entire network of interrelated systems as a polysystem. This included literary as well as non-literary systems and was used to explain canonical as well as non-canonical literary works. It was actually a theory of literature that was extended to the field of translation studies. This theory could analyse the position of translated literature in a given literary system. Even-Zohar's theory had direct relation to his work in Hebrew literature. Hebrew lacked original texts and its literature owed much to works translated from Russian and Yiddish literature. In other words, translations had a central position in Hebrew literature. This is what prompted Even-Zohar to think further about the position that translations can occupy in the literature of a particular language.