On the one hand, terms mean freedom.
In another, more specific sense – the uniqueness of the literary work, or, in a more general sense – the uniqueness of the semiotic system – its ability to relate to itself.
Roman Jakobson and others use the term to denote the self-referentiality of a literary work. Autonomies and autoreflexivity are used to denote the same thing.
The function of such works is not to point out anything beyond themselves, but to reveal the structures and mechanisms of language, and especially of literary language. Indeed, any attempt to point to any extra-literary reality to which the work refers violates its integrity. The insistence that autonomy and self-reflexivity determine the literary text has been strongly challenged by Marxists and other contextualists.
