During the twentieth century new mode of literary criticism developed. This
criticism was developed by Ferdinand de Saussure, Gerole Gennette, Greims and
Todorov. Structuralists gave priority to how the meaning of the text is
produced rather than the meaning itself. Structuralism is a psychological
approach that emphasize studying the elemental structures of consciousness.
Structuralists view society and its rule as expressions of deep structures,
often binary codes that express our primary natures. A systematic study of such
codes is semiotics, which was later hijacked by Post-structuralists as evidence
that language alone provides a true reality.
Ferdinand de Saussure was the father of modern linguists. According to
him, Sign = Signifier/Signified. Signifier is the sound image whereas signified
is concept image. It is possible to find cultural link between signifier and
signified. Structuralists view that every literary work contains a structure. The
structure might be based on binary opposition or it might be narratology (the branch of knowledge
or criticism that deals with the structure and function of narrative and its
themes, conventions, and symbols). The function
of the critic within structural criticism is to analyze the structure and find how
one element or image or metaphor is linked to the other image or metaphor.
Genette in the essay, Structuralist Activity presents how it is
possible to find the structure of the literary text. Within structuralist
activity, the critic must separate different parts and link the relationship of
one part to the other part. Analyzing literary work is finding out the narratology
of the literary text. Greims views that structure of narrative is possible only
by means of subject-verb-object relationship. He presents the binary opposition
between subject and object, sender and receiver and helper and
opponent. Similarly, Tzvetan Todorov presents the narratives on the basis of parts
of speech.
Different structuralists view that there is underlying structure in the
literary text. The function of the critic is to find out the structure. So,
structuralists gave importance to the howness of the meaning, not the whatness
of the meaning. It means rather than giving importance to the meaning, the
process of the generating meaning is important for structuralists.
Structuralists readers as well should seek the way literary text is structured.
EXTENSIVE READING:
EXTENSIVE READING:
Structuralism was
mostly influenced by the schools of phenomenology and of Gestalt psychology,
both of which were fostered in Germany between 1910 and the 1930s.
Phenomenology was a school of philosophical thought that attempted to give
philosophy a rational, scientific basis. Gestalt psychology maintained that all
human conscious experience is patterned, emphasizing that the whole is always
greater than the parts. It fosters the view that the human mind functions
by recognizing or, if none are available, imposing structures.
Structuralism developed
as a theoretical framework in linguistics by Ferdinand de Saussure in
the late 1920s, early 1930s. De Saussure proposed that
languages were constructed of hidden rules that practitioners knows but are
unable to formulate. In other words, though we may all speak the same
language, we are not all able to fully articulate/formulate the grammatical
rules that govern why we arrange words in the order we do.
Claude Levi-Strauss (1908
to 2009) is widely regarded as the father of structuralism. In 1972, his
book Structuralism and Ecology was published detailing the
dogmas of what would become structural anthropology/structuralism. In it,
he proposed that culture, like language, is composed of hidden rules that
govern the behavior of its practitioners. What made cultures unique and
different from one another are the hidden rules participants understood but are
unable to formulate; thus, the goal of structural anthropology is to identify
these rules.
The structuralist
paradigm/image suggests that the structure of human thought processes is the
same in all cultures, and that these mental processes exist in the form of
binary oppositions. Some of these oppositions include hot-cold, male-female,
culture-nature, and raw-cooked. Structuralists argue that binary oppositions
are reflected in various cultural institutions. Structuralists aim to
understand the underlying meaning involved in human thought as expressed in
cultural acts.
Claude Lévi-Strauss: (1908
to 2009) “Father of Structuralism;” born in Brussels in 1908. Obtained a law
degree from the University of Paris. He became a professor of sociology at the
University of Sao Paulo in Brazil in 1934. It was at this time that he began to
think about human thought cross-culturally and alterity, when he was exposed to
various cultures in Brazil. His first publication in anthropology appeared in
1936 and covered the social organization of the Bororo (Bohannan and Glazer
1988:423). After WWII, he taught at the New School for Social Research in New
York. There he met Roman Jakobson, from whom he took the structural linguistics
model and applied its framework to culture (Bohannan and Glazer 1988:423). Lévi-Strauss
has been noted as singly associated for the elaboration of the structuralist
paradigm in anthropology (Winthrop 1991).
Ferdinand de Saussure: (1857
to 1913) Swiss linguist born in Geneva whose work in structural linguistics and
semiology greatly influenced Lévi-Strauss (Winthrop 1991; Rubel and Rosman
1996). Widely considered to be the father of 20th c.
linguistics.
Roman Jakobson: (1896
to 1982) a Russian structural linguist. Was influenced by the work of
Ferdinand de Saussere and worked with Nikolai Trubetzkoy to develop techniques
for the analysis of sound in language. His work influenced
Lévi-Strauss while they were colleagues at the New School for Social Research
in New York.
Marcel Mauss: (1872
to 1952) French sociologist. His uncle was Emile Durkheim. He
taught Lévi-Strauss and influenced his thought on the nature of reciprocity and
structural relationships in culture (Winthrop 1991).
Jacques Derrida: (1930
to 2004) French social philosopher and literary critic who may be labeled both
a “structuralist’ and a “poststructuralist” and was the founder of
deconstructionism. Derrida wrote critiques of his contemporaries’ works,
and of the notions underlying structuralism and poststructuralism (Culler
1981).
Michel Foucault: (1926
to 1984) French social philosopher whose works have been associated with both
structuralist and poststructuralist thought, more often with the latter. When
asked in an interview if he accepted being grouped with Lacan and Lévi-Strauss,
he conveniently avoids a straight answer: “It’s for those who use the label
[structuralism] to designate very diverse works to say what makes us
‘structuralists’” (Lotringer 1989:60). However, he has publicly scoffed at
being labeled a structuralist because he did not wish to be permanently
associated with one paradigm (Sturrock 1981). Foucault deals largely with
issues of power and domination in his works, arguing that there is no absolute
truth, and thus the purpose of ideologies is to struggle against other
ideologies for supremecy (think about competing news networks, arguing
different points of view). For this reason, he is more closely associated with
poststructuralist thought.
The Linguistic
Background:
Twentieth-century linguists such as Ferdinand de Saussure and Roman Jakobson define language as
"that stable systemic ‘core’ that is susceptible to linguistic
formalizations; everything else is mere ‘speech’, which is not language but the
mere ‘performance’ of true language" (Groden
466). In other words, anything that does not conform to the ‘system’
that Saussure, Jakobson, and their contemporaries laid out is merely a
deviation from real language.
An important factor in
linguistics is semiotics, "the domain of investigation that explores the
nature and function of signs as well as the systems and processes underlying
signification, expression, representation, and communication" (Groden 658). In linguistics the ‘word’, either
written or spoken, is the ‘sign’. Saussure defines the ‘sign’ as a union
between a concept and a sound image, which he calls the signified and the
signifier (Groden 652). The sound image
is the word (either written or oral) that we use to define something, for
instance, ‘bicycle’. The concept is the idea of the bicycle that the
sound image puts into the recipients head. In Saussure’s definition the
‘thing’ itself has no place. Words do not get their meaning from an
inherent relationship with the things they represent, the connection is
completely arbitrary but we recognize it "because it is defined as an
element in a system, the ‘structural whole’ of language”
(Groden 652).
Saussure called the
system ‘langue,’ he called the individual utterances ‘parole’. It is easy
to confuse the system with the way it’s used, to think of ‘English’ as the set
of English utterances. Learning English is not, however, about memorizing
a set of utterances. You have to master a system of rules and norms which
make it possible to produce and understand utterances. The rules of
langue may be unconscious but they are known to exist in our "ability to
not only understand utterances, but to recognize grammatically well-formed or
deviant sentences, to detect ambiguity, to perceive meaning relations among
sentences, etc. The linguist attempts to construct a system of rules that
would account for this knowledge by formally reproducing it”
(Culler 8).
The initial work
of Ferdinand de Saussure in the early twentieth century is where
Structuralism in literary criticism gets its base. He based his
examination on three basic assumptions:
- "The systematic nature
of language, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” (Groden 697), which is to say that to study language
scientifically one must examine the system or code, not just the
utterances produced within the system.
- "The relational conception
of the elements of language, where linguistic ‘entities’ are defined in
relationships of combination and contrast to one another”
(Groden 697). Linguists call the individual sounds that make up
words, and in turn our language, ‘phonemes’. What
Saussure is saying here is that phonemes combine and contrast with each
other in the system to make recognizable words.
- "The arbitrary nature of
linguistic elements, where they are defined in terms of the function and
purpose they serve rather than in terms of their inherent qualities” (Groden 697). This, as we saw above, refers to
the idea that the ‘word’ has no inherent relationship to the ‘thing’ it
describes. Signs cannot be studied by their causes, only their
function.
Structuralists take
these premises and apply them further than simply to words and sentences, they
look for the structure behind the broader categories of poetry and narratives.
Structuralist Critics
and their Theories:
Vladimir Propp was a
Russian Formalist scholar who paved the way for future Structuralists to
come. He was born in St. Petersburg Russia to a German
family. Propp studied Russian and German philosophy from 1913 to 1918 at
the University of St. Petersburg and later became a
professor at Leningrad University in the 1930’s until his death.
Propp was an outstanding folklorist, concentrating on fairy tales, heroic epic
poetry, and historical semantics (Makaryk 449-50). His most
important contribution to the study of literature was his study of structural
laws of folklore in "Morfologiia Skazki" (Morphology of the Folklore).
It stated that each folk tale begins with an initial situation where members of
the story are introduced, then it is followed up with thirty–one functions
which do not all have to be there but always occur in the same order
(Glucksmann 56-57).
Gerard Genette was a
literary theoretician and structuralist critic. He studied at Ecole
Normale Superieure and was primarily interested in poetics and rhetoric.
His earliest published books were "Figures 1, 2 and 3", which consist
of essays which focus on authors and methods and literary criticism. (Makaryk
333) He is renowned for his studies on narrative discourse. Genette
believes that a narrative consists of a story, discourse, and narration; which
are all related by tense, mood, and voice. He theorized that there are
three binary oppositions that exist within narrative. The first is
diegesis and mimesis (narrative and representation). Secondly, there is
narration and description (active and complimentive). The last opposition
is narrative and discourse (pure telling and telling). Gerard believes that
narrative is nearly always impure, depending on the writer and readers’
opinions. He believed that the highest degree of purity in writing is in
Hemmingway and Hammett (Makaryk 334).
A. J. Greimas
A.J. Greimas was a
semiotician, who studied law at
the University of Grenoble. He later joined the military
and escaped to France when his country was invaded. He then
obtained his doctorate with his primary thesis in fashion and secondary thesis
in social life (Makaryk 345). Greimas later taught the history of French
language and became a founder of
the Paris school of Semiotics. Anthropology,
folklore, linguistics, mythology, and phenomenology influenced his work
(Makaryk 346). He theorized that within narrative there are three pairs
of binary oppositions, the first being subject/ object, which is connected with
desire, search and aim. Secondly there is sender/receiver, which is
connected with communication. The last opposition is helper/opponent, connected
with auxiliary support and hindrance (Hawkes 92-93). Greimas thought of
narrative in terms of relationships between entities. He broke down
Propp's thirty-one functions into twenty, which can be divided into the
following three categories (Hawkes 94):
1. Contractual: concerned with establishing or breaking of contracts or rules
2. Performative: concerned with the actions of the characters
Tzvetan Todorov
The work of Tzvetan
Todorov shifts from an emphasis on literature as writing to an emphasis on the
connected activity of reading (Hawkes 95). He is another major
critical thinker who seeks to establish a scientific account of narrative
structure. He believes that all narratives need proposition, which is the
smallest, most basic unit of narrative. This can be an agent (i.e. a
person) or a predicate (i.e. an action). He also uses the story of
Oedipus Rex, an abstract yet universal myth to stress his theory, which could
also be referred to as an algebraic formula (Selden 75):
-X is
King
-X marries Y
-Y is X’s
mother
-X kills Z
-Z is X’s father
In this example,
the first three (king, mother, father) propositions denominate
agents. These are specific people or nouns. The first and last two
propositions contain predicates or actions: to be a king, to marry and to kill.
He then goes on to present two higher levels of organization:
1.) Sequence:
a group of propositions form a sequence
2.) Text:
a group of sequences form text.
The basic sequence is
made up of five propositions which outline a basic state of narration that is
"disturbed" and then "re-established." For example
(Selden 76):
EQUILIBRIUM¹ (stability or peace)
FORCE¹ (a disruption of peace i.e. enemy invades)
DISEQUILIBRIUM (climax i.e. war)
FORCE² (in order to restore peace i.e. enemy is defeated)
EQUILIBRIUM² (peace on new terms or a form of compromise)
A succession of
sequences form a text and this text can be organized in several different ways:
1.) Embedding: a story within a story, digression
2.) Linking: a string of sequences
3.) Alteration: interlacing of
sequences
4.) Conglomeration: a mixture of all these forms
Todorov tried to
identify the fundamental narrative units which come together to form larger
structures in text. He aimed to develop a "universal grammar"
which not only underlies all languages and signifying systems, but also acts as
a guidebook for all language and lays out even the most basic functions and
responsibilities of all human beings (Hawkes 97).
Levi Strauss was a
popular French anthropologist who was most well known for his development of
structural anthropology. Some reasons for his extreme popularity are
identified in his refusal to see western civilization as privileged and unique,
his emphasis on form over content and in his insistence that the
"savage" mind is equal to that of the "civilized." He
spent a great deal of time studying the behaviour of North and South American
Indian tribes and believed that men ofevery culture shared
identical characteristics. He believed that man moves from a natural to a
cultural state as he develops language and becomes more educated in specific
studies of discipline which he also believes to be inherent rather than
learned. He derived structuralism from a school of linguistics where the focus
was not on the meaning of the word, but the pattern(s) the word(s)
form(s). This linguistic model of binary opposition is essential for
understanding the human mind. Stories are written by humans, about
humans, and for humans, therefore they ultimately reflect all that is human
(Clarke 30-31).
Strauss also introduced
units of myth which he called "mythemes" and organized these units
into binary oppositions. He noted that reoccurring patterns found in
myths were not culture-specific but ultimately universal, the answer being
found in structure, not context. Myths are a form of complex language
because they have to be told orally to exist. Both myth and language
share many characteristics. For example they are both compiled of certain
functions organized according to specific rules, these functions then form
specific relationships with each other, and they are based on opposites which
also provide the foundation for the structure (Piaget 121-22). This
structural method of evaluation brings order out of chaos. Since
myth is oral literature it is constantly evolving and being reinterpreted/modified
to fit the social structure and beliefs of the time. Strauss was not
interested in the narrative sequence as much as in the structural pattern which
gave the myth meaning. Therefore, as long as the functions occur, order
is not necessarily as important. The myth "grows" but the
structure of the myth stays the same (Hawkes 33).
Culler believed that
history and the author were unimportant to the study of literature, beliefs
that were similar to theorists such as the New Critics. However, Culler also
believed that the text, what was actually written, was equally
unimportant. He felt that the structure of language produces reality as
opposed to language reflecting reality (Selden 85), or the idea that
language uses us, as opposed to us using language. Basically this means
that because our language is structured the way it is, words are a group of
letters that grouped together form sound and meaning to the reader, each reader
will interpret these words somewhat differently in a sentence (Sims). Works can
only be written a certain way and everything we try to express in literature is
governed by the confinements on our language system. Culler was not
really interested in what interpretations people come up with but how they come
up with them, what systems they followed to reach their conclusions, and what
interpretive conventions we use to get the meanings (Selden 82).
Culler said that poets and novelists would stay within certain conventions
based on their knowledge of what a poem is and what a novel is.
Similarly, readers can recognize prose or poetry even if it is written in a
strange way, for example, if the line breaks are taken out of a poem so that is
looks like prose. It would be harder for the reader to analyze a poem written
in this was but s/he would still recognize it as a poem. Culler also
makes a distinction between the competent reader and writer, and the
non-competent reader and writer (Fish). The competent writer will always
write in a way so that the competent reader understands. A competent
writer knows to write poetry in a certain way so it is recognizable as
poetry. People automatically read prose and poetry differently.
They will look for metaphor and metonymy in poetry but not in prose. At
this point, structuralism has moved away from only being based on folklore and
myth.
Jakobson created
another important concept within Structuralism; namely, a combination of
metaphor and metonymy. In order to fully understand both parts of the
concept it is important to know the definitions of both.
Metonymy: A figure
of speech that replaces the name of one thing with the name of something else
closely associated with it. (i.e. the press - for journalists, the
Crown - for royalty) (Baldick 135).
Synecdoche is
another form of metonymy. Synecdoche is when the name of a part is substituted
for that of the whole. For example, hands - for manual laborers
(Baldick 221).
Metaphor: A figure
of speech in which one thing, idea, or action is referred to by a word or
expression normally denoting another thing, idea, or actions - this suggests a
common quality shared by the two (Baldick 134).
Jakobson studied
aphasia with regards to its impacts on poetics (Selden 78).
According to the national website (http://www.aphasia.org/) aphasia is: An impairment of the
ability to use or comprehend words, usually acquired as a result of a stroke or
other brain injury. The primary symptom is an inability to express
oneself when speaking, however, in some cases, reading and writing or
understanding of speech can be the more impaired language modality.
The Barthes clothes
model can be applied as an example. This is explained using the vertical
and horizontal dimensions of the model. The vertical dimension takes
objects and substitutes them one for the other (ex.
sweater—shirt—jacket—vest—blouse). The horizontal dimension takes the
objects and makes a sequence out of them (ex. slacks—blouse—blazer)
(Selden 78). Therefore the vertical dimension relates to the langue
and the horizontal dimension relates to the parole. When Jakobson studied
aphasia he noticed that children usually lost one dimension or another which
hindered their ability to communicate. He defined each dimension even
further as:
Contiguity disorder—the inability to combine elements into a sequence
(Selden 78-79)
Similarity disorder—the inability to substitute an element for another
(Selden 79)
Thus, this becomes a
system of either substitutions or combinations when applied to
structuralism. Since contiguity disorder is related to combinations,
metaphor is directly linked. Also, similarity disorder is related to
substitutions, which directly relates to metonymy.
For example:
Vertical dimension=
langue = substitutions = similarity disorder = metonymy
Horizontal dimension =
parole = combinations = contiguity disorder = metaphor
This is important
because Jakobson believed that in regular speech people unconsciously tended to
favour one or the other (Selden 79). For example, a poet might
express their preference in their literary style. In general, it is
believed that individuals lean toward either the metaphoric or metonymic when
writing.
In conclusion,
structuralism is fundamental to critical theory and thought. Most
structuralists create formulas or frameworks that are predictable, operating in
almost a mathematical sense. They believe that language is merely a
system of signs that in turn grant meaning. Language is nothing without
context to support it within the particular system in which it operates.
Structuralists are interested in systems of difference and multiple examples of
these binaries can be found in both literature and everyday life occurrences.
Works Cited
Baldick,
Chris. The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Literary
Terms. Oxford University Press: New York, 1991.
Clarke, Simon. The
Foundations of Structuralism: A Critique of Levi-Strauss and the Structuralist
Movement. The
Harvester Press: Great
Britain, 1981.
Culler, Jonathan
D. Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of
Literature. Cornell UP: New York, 1975.
Fish, Tom. http://cumber.edu/litcritweb/theory/culler.htm.
Glucksmann,
Miriam. Structuralist Analysis in Contemporary Social Thought. Routledge
& Kegan Paul: Boston, 1974.
Groden, Michael and
Martin Kreiswirth. The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary
Theory & Criticism. Johns Hopkins UP: Baltimore,
1994.
Hawkes,
Terence. Structuralism and Semiotics. Methuen &
Company Limited: London, 1977.
Makaryk, Irena
R. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary
Theory. University of Toronto Press: Toronto, 1993.
Piaget,
Jean. Structuralism. Basic Books Publishing: New York, 1970.
Selden, Raman, Peter
Widdowson, and Peter Brooker. A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary
Literary Theory. Prentice Hall: New York, 1997.
Sims, Amy. http://www.english.udel.edu/teague/sims961.html.
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