Various proponents of alternative paradigms for the study of literature would agree that "the realities of power and authority as well as the resistance offered by men, women and social movements to institutions, authorities and orthodoxies are the realities that make texts possible, that deliver them to their readers, that solicit the attention of critics". In modern literary theory the concept of system goes back at least as far as the Russian Formalists. The word 'system' is used here to refer to a heuristic construct that does emphatically not possess any kind of ontological reality. Systems research would call it a contrived system, because it consists both of objects and human beings who read, write, rewrite books. All writing of literature takes place under the two constraints, patronage and poetics, to which two more constraints must be added. Translation is probably the most obvious instance of rewriting.