structuralism literary analysis essay

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Structuralism by Sean Homer LAST REVIEWED: 26 July 2017 LAST MODIFIED: 26 July 2017 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780190221911-0019

Structuralism is a peculiarly French phenomenon. Emerging from debates primarily within French epistemology (the theory of knowledge) in the 1950s, it came to dominate the Parisian intellectual scene of the mid-1960s and the Anglo-American academy of the 1970s. The phenomenon is closely tied to the rise of the social sciences and the critique of the traditional humanities, especially philology and philosophy. Structuralism is not a philosophy as such but a mode of thinking and analysis applicable to a wide diversity of disciplines, from linguistics, psychology, and anthropology to literature, psychoanalysis, and political economy. While the disparate group of thinkers who are now placed under the rubric “structuralist,” including the psychologist Jean Piaget (b. 1896–d. 1980), the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (b. 1908–d. 2009), the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (b. 1901–d. 1981), the Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser (b. 1918–d. 1990), and the literary critic and semiotician Roland Barthes (b. 1915–d. 1980), do not form a coherent group, they do share a common problématique (see Bachelard 2012 [cited under Epistemic Structuralism: Marxism ]) that characterizes the structuralist project as a whole: the priority of structure over agency, a profound anti-humanism, the preeminence of scientific knowledge over empirical experience, anti-historicism, and, finally, a radical reconceptualization of the human subject. Structuralism is first and foremost a method of analysis that is seen to be applicable to all human social phenomena, namely the social and human sciences as well as the humanities and arts.

General Overviews

Many of the general introductions to structuralism date from the 1970s when the methodology first made an impact within the Anglo-American academy. These works still constitute some of the most accessible introductions. This section is subdivided into Single Author Studies , which develop a specific perspective on the subject, and Edited Collections , which introduce key authors and debates.

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Literary Research: Structuralism and Semiotics

What are structuralism and semiotics.

"In the study of literary works, structuralism is distinguished by its rejection of those traditional notions according to which literature ‘expresses’ an author's meaning or ‘reflects’ reality. Instead, the ‘text’ is seen as an objective structure activating various codes and conventions which are independent of author, reader, and external reality."... Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Sanders Peirce are recognized as the founders of the modern European and Anglo-American traditions of semiotics . Literary semiotics can be seen as a branch of the general science of signs that studies a particular group of texts within verbal texts in general."

Brief Overviews:

• " Structuralism ." The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms .
• " Structuralism ." The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism .
• " Semiotics ." The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms.
• " Semiotics ." Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature.
• " Semiotics ." The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism .

Notable Scholars

Ferdinand de Saussure

• In original French: Cours de linguistique générale .  Payot, 1916.

Roland Barthes

• In original French: “ Éléments de sémiologie .” Communications (Paris), vol. 4, no. 1, 1964, pp. 91–135.

In original French: Le plaisir du texte (first published in 1973 by Éditions du Seuil)

Umberto Eco

• In Italian: Trattato di semiotica generale . Bompiani, 1975.

Julia Kristeva

• The Kristeva Reader . Basil Blackwell, 1986.
• In original French: La révolution du langage poétique; l’avant-garde à la fin du XIXe siècle, Lautréamont et Mallarmé . Éditions du Seuil, 1974.
• Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art , 1980.

 Tzvetan Todorov

Todorov, Tzvetan. Theories of the Symbol . Translated by Catherine Porter, Cornell University Press, 1982.

In original French: Théories du symbole . Éditions du Seuil, 1977.

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Introductions & Anthologies

"Structuralism." The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. "Semiotics." The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism.

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Ai, ethics & human agency, collaboration, information literacy, writing process, structuralist criticism.

• © 2023 by Angela Eward-Mangione - Hillsborough Community College

Structuralist Criticism is

• a research method , a type of textual research , that literary critics use to interpret texts
• a genre of discourse employed by literary critics used to share the results of their interpretive efforts.

Key Terms: Dialectic ; Hermeneutics ; Semiotics ; Text & Intertextuality ; Tone

Structuralism enjoyed popularity in the 1950s and 1960s in both European and American literary theory and criticism. Structuralism focuses on literature as a system of signs in which meaning is constructed within a context. Cultural communities determine the meanings and relationships of signs. Criticism that uses a structuralist approach analyzes patterns, narrative operations, and/or codes of operation to interpret the text and the culture from which it emerges, exploring underlying structures that make the creation of meaning possible.

The popular structuralist critic Terence Hawkes defines structuralism as a way of thinking about the world which is predominantly concerned with the description of structures (17). Structuralism focuses on literature as a system of signs in which meaning is constructed within a context. Words inscribed with meaning may be compared to other words and structures to determine their meaning. Unlike Formalist critics or New Critics, structuralist critics are primarily interested in the codes, signs, and rules that govern social and cultural practices, including communication.

Structuralism first developed in Anthropology (Claude Lévi-Strauss), in literary and cultural studies (Roman Jakobson, Roland Barthes, and Gérard Genette), psychoanalysis, and intellectual history (Culler 17). Structuralism enjoyed popularity in the 1950s and 1960s in both European and American literary theory and criticism.

The seminal text of structuralism is Ferdinand de Saussure’s published collection of lecture notes, Course in General Linguistics (1915). These notes present a structuralist approach to language that focuses on an abstract system of signs. Two parts constitute a sign: the signifier (a spoken mark) and the signified (a concept):

Sign = Signifier

   Signified

For example, when someone says the word “tree,” the sound he or she makes is the signifier, and the concept of a tree is the signified. The relationship of the signifier to the signified determines the meaning of the sign. As David Macey notes in The Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory , signs do not designate an external reality. Signs are meaningful only because of the similarities or differences that exist between them (365). Significantly, cultural communities determine the meanings and relationships of signs. A ghost that appears in a literary text such as William Shakespeare’s Hamlet takes on a specific meaning in a European culture. As demonstrated by “ Shakespeare in the Bush ,” however, the word ghost does not correspond to a concept in all cultures, preventing individuals of different cultures—in this case the Tiv of Nigeria in West Africa—from understanding what it means for a ghost to appear in Hamlet .Structuralist critics also look closely at patterns. For example, observing patterns in literature, critic Northrup Frye coined the term “green world” to describe the practice of release and reconciliation to which characters retreat in Shakespeare’s festive comedies. As You Like It epitomizes the characteristics associated with this pattern of festive comedy. The play begins in a masculine, courtly world where the playwright introduces the love interests of Rosalind and Orlando. After Rosalind is banished by her uncle, who has usurped the throne from her father, she retreats to the feminine green world of the forest. In the forest, she gives lessons to Orlando about how to court and properly treat her, and she reunites with her father. She facilitates the play’s reconciliation by marrying other characters in the play, including Phoebe and Silvius and Audrey and Touchstone. Rosalind also marries Orlando, and her father and her uncle reconcile in the “green world” as well. Shakespeare wrote other plays, such as Twelfth Night and The Two Gentlemen of Verona , which follow this pattern of retreat, release, and reconciliation. These plays also explore an opposition between the masculinity of the courtly world and the femininity of the “green world,” inviting the reader to analyze how each pole of the binary is valued.

Foundational Questions of Structuralist Criticism

• What patterns in the text reveal its similarities to other texts?
• What binary oppositions (e.g., light/dark, good/evil, old/young, masculine/feminine, and natural/artificial, etc.) operate in the text?
• How is each part of the binary valued? Does the binary imply a hierarchy (e.g., is light better than dark, is an old age more valuable than a young age, etc.)?

Online Example: STRUCTURALIST ANALYSIS OF D.H LAWRENCE’S “The White Stocking ” by A Brewis

Discussion Questions and Activities: Structuralist Criticism

• Define the following terms without looking at the article or your notes: sign, referent, and binary opposition.
• Explain the following concepts: sign and binary oppositions.
• Read “ Shakespeare in the Bush .” Explain why Laura Bohannan decides to abandon the words “ghosts” and “devil” to describe Hamlet’s deceased father, insisting that “a witch-sent omen it [he] would have to be.”
• Read Sonnet 127 by William Shakespeare. Analyze the poem’s use of words like “black,” “fair,” “fairing,” “beauty,” “art,” [“art’s”] and “false.” Write a paragraph about how the poem creates tension around the meaning of these words. For example, does the poem seem to contrast the meaning of words like black, fair, or beauty? How does the poem contrast the connotation of these words?

Analyze Sonnet 127 and write a paragraph in which you argue what relationship blackness and beauty share in the poem. Provide evidence from the poem for your viewpoint.

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So What’s all this Stuff About Structuralism and its Effects on Literary Theory? 

John Webster

Note: Barthes' "The Death of the Author" was first published in 1967 (in English) and then again (in French) in 1968. It appeared a third time in a collection of Barthes' essays in 1977. It owes much to his efforts to extend the insights of structuralism to literary theory.

" There are only two or three human stories and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before ."—Willa Cather

I.  If "Structuralism" has had an effect on what we do in the reading of literature, what is it? What happens when one reads structurally?  Basically, it means we do our best to transfer the principles of structuralist analysis in other areas to our work with literary texts. That means that we will want to look for “structures” in literary discourse by looking beyond (or below) surface features to find instead deeper and more abstract elements that underlie surfaces, and to establish both what those basic elements are and what the rules for their combination are. 

What’s that mean?  It all starts with concepts imported from twentieth century work with language.  Consider the following basic, stripped-down “structuralist analysis” of English syntax.  It offers a list of the elements (or “constituents”) of English sentences, along with rules English has for their combination: 

S —> NP VP   [This means:  any English sentence has two major constituents:  a subject (NP) and a predicate (VP)—and nothing else.] NP —> (det) (ADJ) N   [Any English subject has a noun in it, and MAY have either an article (det) or an adjective (ADJ), or both—and nothing else.] VP —> (aux) V (NP) (ADV)*   [Any English predicate will have a verb, and MAY have auxiliary verbs, or an object (NP), or one or more adverbs (ADV), or all of those elements—and nothing else.] 

To see what such an analysis can do linguistically, consider the following two sentences:

“The spurned lover drank her tea slowly.” “The frightened child held the puppy tightly.” 

These sentences are obviously quite different in meaning.  But looked at more abstractly, a structural analysis shows that in structural terms these two sentences are in fact pretty much the same.  Each consists of a subject and a predicate, the subject of each is a noun phrase, and the predicate is a verb phrase, and the substructure of each of the component phrases is almost exactly the same in each sentence.  

Thus, when we look through the surface meanings of sentences like this in order to find deeper structural relations, we see regularities that from the surface alone we would never see.  In this case, two “texts” that look very different end up under analysis revealing that they are at the same time very much the same. 

This turns out to be an important insight.  We can use such understandings to think about how sentences mean, or how children learn language, or how the brain can process an infinitude of different sentences, or, even, what goes wrong in such psychologically debilitating conditions as aphasia.  Indeed, the success with which structuralist linguistic analysis works is a big reason people have looked to extend it to other human-generated systems—like story telling. 

II.  When you think about how this model of searching for underlying structures can be applied to literary texts, it isn’t too hard to see that you would be looking to discover similarly systematic underlying structural relations in the stories we tell.  And to the extent you are able to accomplish that task, you will also have (the structuralist claim goes) a “scientific” basis for explaining literary behavior, just as in the language example above you can locate a “scientific” basis for explaining the syntax of a natural language.  In the study of language this has been very productive—it has led to understandings of many different kinds across many, many languages.  Could it do the same for literature?  That in the 1960’s was certainly the hope. 

Now.  There really are valuable insights to be developed this way.  It is not uninteresting, for example, that Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus and Shakespeare’s Hamlet share many “structural” elements—including a son-hero who spends the play enacting the role of detective in the murder of his father while engaged in a deep relationship (!) with his mother.  From this point of view, in fact, the two plays are surprisingly similar, and that can lead in turn to a number of conversations about the significance of that similarity.  And certainly, the Willa Cather quotation I give above suggests a way of understanding all of literature as the repetition of a very few basic elements.  No doubt she’d add something about how they could be combined in different orders, just as is the case with the elements of English sentences, but she is pointing towards something that to her is a deep and powerful truth about what literature is and does. 

And if you were to push towards other levels of structural analysis, you would find other ways of reducing the myriad complexity of the universe of discourse to a more handle-able set of meaning units.  Thus in an obvious case, you can greet someone in many, many ways, from “Hello” and “Hi” and “What’s happening?” to no more than a nod of the head or a smile and raised eyebrows.  Each is distinct, yet at a certain level each is also the same—a primary move in a semi-ritualized behavior pattern—“greeting”—that goes on millions (or billions) of times a day all over the English speaking world. 

Moreover, once you see that as a way of capturing a fact about English speaking societies, you might also go on to wonder whether this was not so much society-specific as universal to human cultures.  So you might ask whether ALL human languages have similar greeting systems.  That’s actually an empirical question—it’s something you’d have to go out and find out.  You’d find a lot of words and phrases that don’t look or sound anything alike, but which are structurally very similar.  “ Ni hao ma ?”—a standard greeting in Chinese—obviously is as different as can be on the surface from “Hi.”  But the fact that Chinese, and Italian, and Tagalog and language after language have greeting terms may also be a step towards capturing something deep and powerful about human behavior and about the role of language in structuring, enabling, and regulating that behavior. 

Coming back to the literary, theorists have been highly intrigued by being able to see deep regularities in literary behaviors we study.  For if we can see a certain amount of systematicity in our literary behaviors, we are likely to be curious about how far that idea can be taken.  That’s why people like Barthes start experimenting with new claims about the deep structure similarities to be found in literary discourse. 

Now, that said, to this point structuralist methods have not carried the day as a hermeneutic.  I think one reason they have not is that in practice no structuralist critic has ever produced anything nearly subtle enough to account for the complex entities that texts turn out to be.  It may be interesting to think about the ways texts (like sentences) can be analyzed into constituent structures, but that way of thinking just hasn’t said enough about the sorts of things that interest us about how texts mean—and a major reason for this is that in excluding the actual surfaces of texts (the language choices “authors” actually make, for example, along with what we readers can and cannot do in response to those choices) structuralism also excludes most of what we care most about in literary texts.  You can only get texts to be this simple if you ignore reference and use.  True, as Barthes declares, literary texts are not “transitive” in the normal sense of the word.  But just because they don’t work exactly like things we say in ordinary human conversations doesn’t mean that they “do” nothing.  In fact they do indeed do things—lots of things, including educate, frighten, amuse, urge, create sympathy or anger. 

Radway’s explorations of middlebrow literature offer an example of the limits of the structuralist model.  For while sharing Barthes’ anti-establishment bias, and sharing as well a shift of interest from text and/or author to reader, Radway’s way of seeing literary discourse is not finally a place Barthes himself would be happy.  For in the end she is interested in texts in use—how different readers use different texts for purposes of their own—based on experience, age, class, and so on, and in how these texts affect and structure their naïve readers.  And that for her quite naturally leads to other questions—such as what people use texts for, and what significance those uses have for them.  Thus by the end of her piece she’s explained her ambivalence about middlebrow writing by noting that while on one hand she is still carried away by the rush of reading excitement such books produce in her, on the other hand her analytic bent reveals to her some disquieting things about what she thinks these books ALSO do, all under cover of being nothing more than exciting and powerful reading experiences. 

Moreover, while a certain conception of authorial intention can indeed be (just as Barthes argues) a misleading way of limiting and even suppressing interpretation, maybe the right response to that isn’t abolishing the notion of “intention” altogether as a guide to interpretation (thus removing the author entirely from consideration of a text’s interest—what Barthes calls the “death” of the author).  Maybe we should respond to the downside of the concept of “author” by rethinking that concept in order to demystify it.  Thus if we imagine authorial “intent” as something (like all of our intentions) that is limited in scope, capable of being misunderstood or even badly expressed by the writer him-/herself, for example, and if we understand that what texts do for readers can be related to an author’s intention in a very different ways, then we might suggest it isn’t “intention” that limits reading.  Rather it is the fetishization of intention such that the act of interpretation becomes defined exclusively or even just primarily as the recovery and account of “what the author meant.”  So maybe we shouldn’t just throw authors and their “intentions” into the dustbin of  history. 

Does that mean we can just ignore Barthes after all?  I don't think so!  For Barthes is right to argue that to the extent authorial intention excludes understanding much of what Hamlet (for example) actually does for its readers, it is both limiting and falsifying.  At the same time, however, what theory does next, and what this course will be doing next as well, is follow this conversation through its next few turns.  As we shall see in our remaining readings, one can explain a lot of post-structural and post-colonial discourse as a set of revisions of the notion that the author is dead.  So don’t worry.  Authors as a subject of literary interest are in fact far from dead.  Indeed, they may actually be more alive than ever!  It’s just that in most interpretive frames they are much more “normalized” than traditional canonical criticism had allowed them to become. 

III.  To close this discussion of structuralism, I’ll suggest that while it is certainly the case that there are structures in literature, the structuralist perspective hasn’t taken over because at a word-by-word level these structures occur and shift and reoccur in bewildering complexity.  But even if structuralism hasn’t finally been all that productive in terms of reading practices, it still has had a major effect on the tradition of “literary” interpretation.  The ways it has made a difference include: 

• Its attack on the “elitism” of the literary establishment resonated strongly, especially with younger scholars, and encouraged other forms of rebellion against conventional thinking. 
• Its “scientific” dimension helped to promote the introduction of a whole range of new texts (like romances) into the arena of the “study-able.”  Barthes, for example, wrote not just on literary topics but on the systems of style as well. 
• It helped to breathe the oxygen of interdisciplinarity into literary studies, which in time led to cultural studies (Radway is an example) and, more recently, to postcolonial studies.
• In more abstract forms, the attractions of structuralist thought seem very much at the root of much post-structuralist theorizing in Derrida and Foucault. Neither would identify themselves as "structuralists," but they are very obviously concerned with structural problems in how and what we know, and how best to identify and respond to them.

As we move to Rabinowitz, Said and Spivak, then, we will be thinking of what they argue in terms of the way they extend this ferment in the world of textual studies by exploring even newer realms of textual complexity.  There are indeed, as Hamlet tells Horatio, “more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy”—at least so long as Horatio’s philosophical dreaming hasn’t been much focused on postcolonialism. 

Literary Theory and Criticism

Home › Narrative Theory › Structuralist Narratology 

Structuralist Narratology 

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on March 21, 2016 • ( 3 )

Espoused by Tzvetan Todorov  and Roland Barthes, Structuralist Narratology illustrates how a story’s meaning develops from its overall structure (the langue) rather than from each individual story’s isolated theme (the parole). According to Aristotle, all narratives develop longitudinally, from beginning to middle and the end through the casual selection and temporal combination of events. This means that narratives can be analysed horizontally, at what Barthes calls the syntagmatic level. But narratives are also complex “representations” of events, whose meaning requires interpretation. This complexity of meanings calls for a vertical, paradigmatic, hermeneutic analysis. It is this vertical axis of narrative which the Russian Formalists had in mind when they differentiated between a “fabula” and “siuzhet” (Todorov’s “story” and “discourse”) as the two main analytical levels.

Drawing on Saussurean linguistics, the French structuralists defined literature as a kind of langue of which each specific work is an instance of parole. Roland Barthes, Claude Bremond, A.J. Greimas and Tzvetan Todorov chose to develop an underlying structural approach to literature. Consequently,.the main aim of their structural activity was to identify the general codes that structure literary language as a whole. In this abstract type of approach, the individual work is relevant only as the concrete materialisation, among many possible virtual ones, of the general codes. On the contrary, the surface structure of the discourse approach to narrative pays attention primarily to the analysis of the functioning of individual works as langue in their own right. This approach is dominated by the work of Gerard Genette.

Tzvetan Todorov

Both approaches have a common origin and practice. Studies such as Barthes’ Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives  and Todorov’s Poetics partake of both. When Todorov coined the term “narratology”, in the Grammar of Decameron, he gave it the all-inclusive meaning of “the ;cience of narratives.” Todorov, drawing on the distinction made by Russian ‘ormalists between tabula and siuzhet, proposes working on two major levels of descriptions, the “story” and “discourse”. The story (the argument) comprises a logic of actions and a syntax of characters, while discourse (the ray in which the story is told by the narrator to the reader) comprises tenses, aspects and modes of narrative.

Drawing on Todorov’s distinction between “story” and “discourse,. Genette goes on to distinguish three aspects of narrative reality — the story (the narrative content or the signified), the narrative (the signifier, discourse or the narrative text) and narrating (the narrating act itself). This distinction is crucial as it allows Genette to organise the analysis of narrative in wholly relational terms. Genette envisions the study of narrative as essentially a study of the relationships between narrative and story, between narrative and narrating, and between story and narrating.

Source: Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide, Loistyson Second Edition, Routledge.

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Categories: Narrative Theory , Uncategorized

Tags: AJ Greimas , Claude Bremond , fabula , Gerard Genette , Langue , Linguistics , Literary Criticism , Literary Theory , Parole , Roland Barthes , siuzhet , Structuralism , Structuralist Narratology , Tzvetan Todorov , Vladimir Propp

• Narrative Theory – Literary Theory and Criticism Notes
• Structuralism – Literary Theory and Criticism Notes
• Structuralism | Literary Theory and Criticism

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English Studies

This website is dedicated to English Literature, Literary Criticism, Literary Theory, English Language and its teaching and learning.

Structuralism

Etymology and Meanings of “Structuralism” Literary Theory

Etymologically, the term structuralism comprises two terms structure and -ism. Structure means shape or form, while -ism refers to a type of philosophy, point of view, or theory on which it is based. Therefore, structuralism means a branch of philosophy based on the structure of things, ideas, and texts. Structuralism relates to psychology, linguistics, sociology, history, philosophy, archaeology, culture as well as anthropology.

Definition of “Structuralism” Literary Theory

In literature, structuralism literary theory shows a type of analysis that deals with recurring patterns of thinking and consequential behavior. It is mostly related to culture. In other words, as human thinking is based on structures, a literary piece could be analyzed from a structural point of view.

Origin of “Structuralism” Literary Theory

Structuralism is stated to have originated from the thoughts of Ferdinand de Saussure, a Swiss semiotician, and linguist. He also presented his views on the pattern of the Moscow and Prague schools of thought. They argue that there is a distinction between langue and parole (application of language in actual life) and that a sign refers to a signifier, or visual image as perceived. Signifiers are arbitrary due to differences in languages which means there are only positive terms. These structures determine human freedom and will.

Levi-Strauss and Roman Jakobson further added to this work by writing about elements of structures and their kinship. Jacques Lacan and Jean Piaget also commented on it from the psychological point of view as they term these structures as constructions or abstractions. It also touches the boundaries of Marxism due to Louis Althusser’s interpretation and enters the literary realm from these avenues.

Structuralism as a Literary Theory

As a literary theory , structuralism intends to identify and analyze structures in the texts. This could be about the genre, intertextuality, narrative structures, and motifs. In this connection, it enters the semiotic field in which readers have to interpret signs, symbols, and minor structures that occur in the text. Therefore, it is also called “grammar of literature” having different structures and parts to play their roles in the texts. In other words, it means to see basic elements such as myths, stories, and anecdotes, dotting the text and analyzing them for the specific roles they play.

Principles of Structuralism Literary Theory

• Every language has a different work for different objects and ideas which creates a difference in mind.
• There are two relationships: metaphorical and metonymic.
• Every idea, thing, or concept has a binary opposition such as leaving/arriving, coming/going, etc.
• Signs are made of a signified and a signifier.
• Every language has a different code that varies from culture to culture and from context to context.
• Signs have a multiplicity of meanings based on cultural contexts.
• The subject is contradictory to the individual which helps understand the conscious and unconscious.
• Every work is a social construction.
• As language is a social construction, every object, idea, and concept is a social construction.

Criticism Against Structuralism Literary Theory

• Structuralism ignores history during critique.
• It is not fluid and does not allow ideas to transform.
• It stresses more on introspection.
• It stresses too much on self-reflection or self-analysis.
• It considers language only comprises signs and literature a system of signs, and meanings only in a context.

Examples of Structuralist Criticism

Example # 1

From “Past, Present, Future” by Emily Bronte

Tell me, tell me, smiling child, What the past is like to thee? ‘An Autumn evening soft and mild With a wind that sighs mournfully.’ Tell me, what is the present hour?

Its structuralist critique first takes the issue of binary opposition and the use of referents. If the child is smiling, it means he must be weeping earlier. The same goes for the autumn that must have been spring and if the wind is mournful, earlier it must have been happy. In this context, it seems that the child is still smiling though he should have been weeping. This connects it with the idea of the past and present which leads to the future.

Example # 2

From Sonnet CXXVII by William Shakespeare

In the old age black was not counted fair, Or if it were, it bore not beauty’s name; But now is black beauty’s successive heir, And beauty slander’d with a bastard shame:

In a structuralist critique of these verses from Sonnet CXXVII, the binary opposition shows that old age to young, black to white, and fair to ugly. Further binary opposition points out that this is a love sonnet that has been written in the praise of beauty which should have been ugly in binary opposition. The metaphorical presentation of beauty shows this thematic strand of praise.

Example # 3

From One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey

Everybody on the ward can feel that it’s started. At eleven o’clock the doctor comes to the day-room door and calls over to McMurphy that he’d like to have him come down to his office for an interview. “I interview all new admissions on the second day.” McMurphy lays down his cards and stands up and walks over to the doctor. The doctor asks him how his night was, but McMurphy just mumbles an answer.

This passage from Ken Kesey’s novel, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest , could be critiqued from a structuralist point of view. Using semiotics, this text could be placed in the African American cultural setting to deduce the meanings of McMurphy and how he behaves. The terms worth considering in semiotics are “mumbles”, “night” and “doctor” which shows that he is suffering from some mental illness. The night could reflect his cultural background.

Example # 4

From “Postcard from god” by Imtiaz Dharker

Yes, I do feel like a visitor, a tourist in this world that I once made. I rarely talk, except to ask the way, distrusting my interpreters, tired out by the babble of what they do not say. I walk around through battered streets, distinctly lost, looking for landmarks from another, promised past.

These verses are from the poem “Postcard from god.” Using binary opposition such as visitor/native, rarely/often, talk/silent, ask/tell, and lost/found, a structuralist critique of these lines could show how the poet feels after visiting different places as a tourist and what he wants to convey to his readers.

Example # 5

From “The Flying Cat” by Naomi Shihab Nye

Never, in all your career of worrying, did you imagine

What worries could occur concerning the flying cat.

You are traveling to a distant city.

The cat must travel in a small box with holes.

Using references of the structuralist approach, these verses could be interpreted from several points of view, specifically, the use of a second person, the flying cat and myths involved with it, the distant city and its stories, and finally why the cat is mentioned traveling in a small box. When the dots are connected, it seems that this involves not only myths but also social traditions.

Keywords in Structuralism Literary Theory

Structuralist approach, structuralists, proairetic, semiotic, hermeneutic, symbolic, symbols, referents, referring, reference, sign, signified, signifier

Suggested Readings

Abrams, Meyer Howard, and Geoffrey Harpham. A Glossary of Literary Terms . Cengage Learning, 2014.

Hawkes, Terence. Structuralism and Semiotics . Routledge, 2003. Giddens, Anthony. “Structuralism, post-structuralism.” Social Theory Today (1987): 195.

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Analysis Of Structuralism In Literary Texts English Literature Essay

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