Structuralism

Structuralism is a general approach in various academic disciplines that seeks to explore the inter-relationships between some fundamental elements, upon which higher mental, linguistic, social, cultural etc "structures" are built, through which then meaning is produced within a particular person, system, culture.

Structuralism in the Literary Theory and Literary Criticism

In literary theory structuralism is an approach to analysing the narrative material by examining the underlying invariant structure. For example, a literary criticist applying a structuralist literary theory might criticise the authors of the West Side Story by claiming that they did not write anything "really" new, because they wrote just "yet another" paraphrase of the structure of the classical Romeo and Juliet text. In both texts a girl and a boy fall in love (a "formula" with a symbolic operator between them would be "Boy +LOVE Girl") despite the fact that they belong to two groups that hate each other ("Boy's Group -LOVE Girl's Group") and conflict is resolved by their death. On the other hand, such a literary criticist could make the same claim about a rather different story of two friendly families ("Boy's Family +LOVE Girl's Family") that make an arranged marriage between their children despite the fact that they hate each other ("Boy -LOVE Girl") and the children commit suicide to escape the arranged marriage, because this second story's structure can be seen as an 'inversion' of the first story's structure, since the relationship between the values of love and the two pairs of parties involved have been reversed. In sum, a structuralistic literary criticism argues that the "novelty value of a literary text" can lay only in new structure, rather than in the specifics of character development and voice in which that structure is expressed.

Related Topics:
Literary theory - West Side Story - Romeo and Juliet

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