STRUCTURALISM

A theoretical approach to the concept of social structure.

 Understanding Structuralism

● Challenged Liberal Humanism

● Anti - humanistic approach to literary studies
● Began in France
● Became popular in 1960s in the rest of the europe

“Things cannot be understood in isolation. They have to be seen in

the context of larger structures they are a part of.”

Structuralism is "the belief that phenomena of human life are not

intelligible except through their interrelations". - Simon Blackburn
 Let’s trace its roots
Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), Swiss Linguist - Structural Linguistics

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908 - 2009), French Anthropologist - Social

Structure; Cultural Studies; Basic human behaviour

Popular in 1960s - Roland Barthes (1915-1980) - Semiotics

Michel Foucault (1926-1984) - Corporal Punishment

Louis Althusser (1918-1990) - Marxist Structuralism

Ferdinand de
Saussure Construction of meaning &
Function of Grammatical structures
(Swiss Linguist)
Meanings are...
1. Arbitrary (conventional naming)
2. Relational (adjoining/opposite
words; paradigmatic chain;dyads)
3. Constitutive (does not reflect the
world but constitutes it)

Langue and Parole

Book - Course in General Linguistics (1915)

Claude Levi-Strauss Interpretation of Myths &
Concept of ‘Mythemes’
(French Anthropologist)
Worked on the Oedipus Myth in the
context of Theban Myths

No individual tale has inherent

meaning. It can only be understood in
terms of
1. Its position in the cycle
2. similarities with other tales
3. Differences from other tales.

Structure has greater significance

than individual item.
Roland Barthes 1968 - Essay - Death Of The Author
Analysed Balzac’s Sarrasine
(French Essayist & Critic)
“ Literature is that neuter, that
composite, that oblique into which
every subject escapes, the trap where
all identity is lost, beginning with the
very identity of the body that writes.”

5 Basic Codes that can generate all

possible actual narratives
Proairetic Code, Hermeneutic Code,
Cultural Code, Semic Code, Symbolic Code
 What do structuralist critics do?

1. Analyse prose narratives in context of larger structures like

Genre, Theme, Motifs, etc.

2. Find linguistic parallels in literature - applying linguistic analogies

like that of morpheme and phoneme to narratives.

3. Apply systematic patterning and structuring to an entire culture.

Other names associated with Structuralism are….

1. Roman Jacobson
2. Jacques Lacan
3. Vladimir Propp
4. A J Greimas
5. Tzvetan Todorov