Literary Theory - Week 3

Structuralism

A way of thinking that works to find the fundamental basic units or elements of which anything is made.

Linguistics

One of the first and most important disciplines to adopt a structuralist perspective, because the operations of any language fit well within a structuralist framework.

Grammar

The rules that tell you how to combine words to make sense.

Synchronic Analysis

Structuralists look at a whole structure or system at the present moment, as if it had always been that way and would always be that way.

Diachronic Analysis

Modes of analysis that try to account for changes over time.

Signifying Systems

Any set of units and rules that create a method for conveying meaning.

Sign

A linguistic unit consisting of two parts: the sound image and the concept; the union of a concept and a sound image.

Signifier

The sound image of a sign.

Signified

The concept of a sign.

Arbitrariness

There is nothing inherent in either the word (signifier) or the thing (signified) that makes the two go together; no natural, intrinsic, or logical relation between a particular sound image and a concept.

Linearity of language

Signs exist in time and space, and signs are read in linear order.

Langue

The system of language as a whole.

Parole

An individual unit of the language system (a word).

Signification

A signifier and a signified come together to create a sign; it exists on the level of the individual parole.

Value

At the level of langue, meaning exists because one sign is not any of the other signs in the system.

Syntagmatic Relations

Linear relations in spoken or written language where words form a chain, linking one unit to the next in a specific order.

Associative Relations

Meanings that a language-using subject makes based on personal inclination or cultural associations, rather than on grammatical structure.

Mythemes

The basic units of myth; usually one event or position in the story, the narrative, of the myth.

Structuralism

Examining the structure of a text to see how it works.

Structuralism

Examining a large number of texts to discover common structures underlying them.

Structuralism

Examining the structure of a single text to see that it belongs to a particular structural system.

Structural Approaches to Literature

Focuses on narrative patterns, linguistic conventions, and character archetypes.

Functions

Actions in Narratology as defined by Vladimir Propp.

Spheres of Action

Roles in Narratology as defined by Vladimir Propp.

Narratology - Gérard Genette

Tense, Order, Duration, Frequency, Mood, Voice

Archetypal Criticism - Northrop Frye

Spring—comedy, rebirth, renewal. Summer—romance, triumph, union. Autumn—tragedy, decline, separation. Winter—irony/satire, chaos, darkness.

Structural Anthropology - Claude Lévi-Strauss

Structures of rituals and myths.

Semiotics - Roland Barthes

Structures (semiotic codes) not only behind linguistic but also behind non-linguistic objects and behaviours (sign systems).

Romeo and Juliet - Structure

Initial order disrupted, conflict, resolution (tragic), order restored.

Structuralism

Explores how underlying structures shape human consciousness and understanding.

Parole

Surface phenomena

Langue

Structure

Difference

How we perceive the world

Binary Oppositions

How we perceive difference

Signifier

Sound, image, gesture, etc.

Signified

Concept to which the signifier refers