Structuralism is a literary theory that emerged in the 1950s, primarily in France, positing that meanings are derived from underlying structures rather than isolated texts. Key figures like Claude Lévi-Strauss and Roland Barthes argued that understanding narratives requires contextualizing them within larger cultural and social systems, suggesting that language and its structures significantly shape human consciousness. The theory contrasts with formalism by connecting texts to broader structural and thematic frameworks instead of focusing solely on individual works.

1. Topic: Structuralism
Subject: Literary Theory

2. Outline
• What is structuralism?
• Linguistic input in Structuralism
• Different terms and Structuralism
• Strauss and structuralism
• Ronald Barthes and Structuralism
• Structuralism and Literature
• What Structuralist Critic Do?
• Difference between Formalism and Structuralism
• Activity

3. What is Structuralism?
• Structuralism emerged in France in 1950s and its
central figures were Claude Levi-Strauss and Roland
Barthes. In Britain, it gained popularity in1970’s and
was reflected in Culler’s Structuralist Poetics (1975),
Terence Hawke’s Structuralism and Semiotics (1977),
David Lodge’s Working with Structuralism (1990) and
Scholes’s Structuralism in Literature.
It was response to ‘Cambridge revolution’ in 1920s
which provided basic analytical method to New
Criticism/ Formalism i.e. close study of texts in
isolation from structures and contexts. Formalism was
text-based—it excluded larger questions, abstract
issues and ideas.

4. Conti…
• Questions: What is literary? What is poetic structure?
How do narratives work?
• Structuralist Belief: Things cannot be understood in
isolation. They can be comprehended only in the
contexts of larger structures.
• These structures are generated by the human mind.
They are imposed by our way of perceiving the world
and organizing experience. Structures we see in things
or texts are the structures of our own mind.
“Structures we perceive in the world are the innate
structures of the human consciousness…projected
onto the world” (Tyson).

5. Conti…
• We have too many facts to perceive. We need systems
to make their sense. These systems/structures
originate within human consciousness. “Without these
structures our world would be chaos” (Tyson).
• Hence, discovering the underlying structures of the
world’s phenomena is discovering something about the
inner structures of human consciousness. They are not
objective concrete entities existing in the external
world but conceptual frameworks used to organize and
understand the physical entities.

6. Conti…
• Implication: Meaning is not a kind of core or
essence inside things. Rather they lie outside
them. Meanings are attributed to the things by
the human mind.
• Structuralists usually do not focus on individual
literary works but larger, abstract structures that
contain them. Thus their approach leads us
farther away from the text into large and abstract
questions of genre, history and philosophy.
Structures are formed by cultural and social
practices.

7. Conti…
• Example: We can understand Donne’s poem “Good
Morrow” if we have a clear notion of the genre, alba ‘dawn
song’ of 12th century in courtly love poetry as the poem
parodies and subverts this genre.
• Any single poem is an example of a particular genre, and
the genre and the example relate to each other as a phrase
spoken in English relates to the English language as a
structure with all its rules, its conventions.
Structures are usually abstract—the notion of the literary
or the poetic or the nature of narrative itself are not as
concrete as history of the alba or courtly love.

8. Conti…
• Tyson has identified three properties of a structure as a
structural system: wholeness, transformation and self-
generation.
• Wholeness means it functions as a unit—parts work
together to create something new as hydrogen and
oxygen make water. It is not sum or undividable whole.
Transformation means it is not static but dynamic,
changing-- not a structure but structures– as new
material is always being structured by the system: basic
units (phonemes) into new utterances (words). T-rules.
Self-generation means transformations never lead
beyond its own structural system—elements generated
belong to the system and obey its laws.

9. Conti…
• All surface phenomena belong to a structural system:
• Words Ali is tall.
Dogs remain loyal.
They are heroes.
• Structures
• Parts of Speech
Noun
• Rules of combination
Subject
verb complement
Predicate

10. Conti…
• Components of a structure are fewer in
number and serve to organize, classify and
simplify. Language is the most fundamental
structure of mankind on which most other
structures depend. So structuralists’ use
terminology of Linguistics in their theoretical
assertions.

11. Linguistic input into Structuralism
• Structuralism of 1950s and 60s has roots in Saussure’s
modern approach to the study of language. In contrast
19th
to century historical studies of language
(diachronic), Saussure examines patterns and functions
•
of language in use today (synchronic). He studies how
meanings are maintained and established and what are
functions of grammatical structures.
• He views language as a system of signs. A sign consists of
two elements— the signifier (sound or written symbol)
and the signified (Mental concept): cow—an animal in the
world.
Sign= Signified/signifier

12. Conti…
• He further argued that the relation between the sign
and the signified is not natural or inherent. The word
‘cow’ does not naturally refer to the object cow. We
have different names for the same animal in different
languages: Cow, Gaey, Gaan.
• Meanings we give to the words are purely arbitrary.
They are maintained by conventions. The relationship
between signifier and signified is arbitrary
Implication: language is not reflection of the world and
of experience, but a system which stands quite
separate from it.

13. Conti…
• Then he asserted that meanings lie in difference. Cow is cow
because it is not dog or goat etc. In paired objects male/female—.
“In language there are only differences, without fixed terms”. ( Idea
of Binary opposites). Meanings are not present in words.
• There are no intrinsic fixed meanings of language. For him
meanings of words are relational. No word can be defined in
isolation from other words—adjoining words: ‘Hut’ has a position in
a paradigmatic chain—a chain of words related in function and
meaning each of which can be substituted for any of the others in a
given sentence. Hut—hovel, shed, hut, house, mansion, palace.
(Idea of Paradigmatic and syntagmatic relation). Paradigmatic is
the vertical axis or the axis of choice or selection of words whereas
Syntagmatic is the horizontal axis or the axis of arrangement of
words in sentences.

14. Conti…

15. Conti…
• Implication. Paradigmatic is the vertical
relation or the axis of choice from where we
have the choice to select whatever suitable
and the Syntagmatic is the axis which is axis of
combination or the axis of chain or making
arrangements- means we choose and then
order-it implies that Literary texts are best
chosen words in best order. Means this
relationship differentiate between literary and
non-literary text.

16. Conti…
• Saussure made distinction between langue
(language as a system or rules) and parole (use
of the rules or utterance). Any remark in French
makes sense if you possess the whole body of
rules and conventions governing verbal behavior
called French. A remark makes sense when seen
in relation to a wider containing structure.
Structuralists maintain that an individual literary
work is an example of a literary langue-makes
sense in the context of some wider containing
structure—notion of the novel as a genre as a
body of literary practice (Parole).

17. Strauss and Structuralism
• Strauss has used Saussure’s model of how language works to
interpret the myth. Structuralists argue that an individual tale from
a cycle of myths does not have separate and inherent meaning but
can be understood by considering its position in the whole cycle
and the similarities and differences between the tale and others in
the sequence. Oedipus myth has repeated motifs and contrasts.
They identify mytheme of a narrative as Grammarians identify
morpheme
Method—from the particular to the general, placing the individual
within a wider structural context or genre conventions of writing.
Signifying system is an organized and structured set of signs which
carries cultural meaning. Culture can be ‘read’ like language—
fashions—clothing—breaking rules

18. Ronald Barthes and Structuralism
• Barthes’ S/Z examines Balzac’s short story ‘Sarrasine’ by
identifying in it 561 lexis or units of meaning and five codes.
He regards theses codes as the basic underlying structure
of all the narratives-- story (parole) in the system of codes
(langue). His The Death of the Author (1968) has post-
structural tilt as it subverts confident positivism of
structuralism but reduces complexity and diversity of
fiction to five codes.
• 1-The proairetic code indicates actions: The ship sailed.
• 2. The hermeneutic code poses questions or enigmas to
create suspense: He saw an unconscious person there.
• 3-The cultural code—refers to common knowledge beyond
the text: His fat opponent lay resting (lazy).

19. Conti…
• The semic or connotative code is linked to the
theme. When it is organized around a particular
proper name, it constitutes ‘character’
• The symbolic code is also linked to the theme but
on a larger scale. It comprises contrasts and
pairings—the basic human way of perceiving and
organizing reality.
• A structuralist looks at parallels, echoes etc
instead of going for the contents at first. He
schematizes the narrative.

20. Structuralism in Literature
• Literature being a verbal art is composed of language.
Its relation to structuralism is direct.
• Structuralists maintain that structuring mechanisms of
the human mind are the means by which we make
sense out of chaos, and literature is a fundamental
means by which human beings explain the world to
themselves, that is, make sense of chaos.
• Structuralists mainly focus on prose narratives.
However most drama and poetry have a narrative
dimension and hence come in its domain. Features—
plot, setting, and character.

21. Conti…
• They relate a text to some larger containing
structures as conventions of a literary genre, a
network of inter-textual connections, model
of an underlying universal narrative structure,
a notion of narrative as a complex of recurrent
patterns or motifs. Tyson has identified three
specific areas of study in literature: the
classification of literary genres, the description
of narrative operations, and the analysis of
literary interpretations.

22. What a Structuralist Critic do?

23. Difference b/w Formalism and
Structuralism
• Structuralism and formalism are two literary
theories or literary criticisms that focus on the
form of a particular text. Structuralism is based
on the assumption that every text has a universal,
underlying structure. Formalism analyses the
structure of a text without focusing on the
external factors such as authorship, social and
cultural influence. However, structuralism
connects the work of a particular author with
works of similar structures whereas formalism
only analyses one particular work at a time.

24. Conti…
• Formalist focus only on form through literary devices
used in literary work especially in poem to highlight its
literariness whereas structuralists focus on form to see
• Order, structure in anything is everything
• Because they perceive that everything is designed in
some sort of hierarchal and structural patterns---
society, culture, language and literature and even
thought and behavior…
• Literary texts are composed of series of signs that are
meaningful due to its relations with other signs in
other texts and then to other genres and poetics of
literature as whole.

25. Activity
• What are binary opposites? Find out a few
binary opposites from any poem you have
read.
• What are the Barthes five codes? Apply these
codes on any short story you have read in your
course.
• What is the linguistic input of Saussure to
Structuralism that paved the way for
structuralism in other discipline as well?