V Semester Literary theory class notes 3

12 June 2010

Notes by Anusha

STRUCTURALISM 

The word authority comes from the word author. Author is the one who sanctions the meaning of his/her work. The work could be the constitution, Bible, or anything else.

Different approaches to study English were:
1. Historical- Biographical approach
2. Formalism
3. Textual analysis
4. Structuralism
5. Post structuralism


Feminism takes its methods, strategies from post structuralism.

‘Ism’ is a movement, a whole population looking at a particular way. It is a social movement. Like sciences; larger units broken into smaller units to study them, language also is broken into,

Words
Sentences
Paragraphs
Sounds

Literature is a unit and is studied through language.

Usually the structure of a word is looked for word is a sign. Sign is made up of

Signifier
Signified

E.g.: A ‘Dog’ is a group of letters in a written form, but the word creates an image.

Vladimir Propp a Russian structuralist made a detailed study of folk tales from all over the world and noted that there are only 31 types of folk tales. The structure is only of 31 types and different tale are only reconstruction of it.

Structuralism can not be studied with a single work. Comparison is an important aspect and hence requires two works of the same author. This comparison paves way for universalisation of the findings.

Structuralism does not deal with the content but emphasizes on the structure.

Pinto, Anil. Class Lecture. Introduction to Literary Theory. Christ University. Bangalore, India. 12 June 2010