Structuralism in Literature

Barthes

- "The Death of the Author" (1968) - Literature is written by the overall system of writing, not by individual authors. - Claims that time in narrative belongs only to the referent and has nothing to do with narrative discourse.

Binary Opposition

- 2 opposites / 2 different things. - Opposites that give meaning to each other by their differences. - Loaded cultural coeds that people contest and seek to stabilize or change.

Difference

- A comparative theoretical lens. - Synonyms, which "have value only through their opposition."

Linguistics

- A linguistic system is a series of differences of sound combined with a series of differences of ideas.

Essentialists

- An essentialist believes in a reality independent of language.

Synchronic

- Descriptions. - Proceeds without regard to time. - Considers language at one time w/o taking history into account.

Discursive

- Discourse. - System of representations. - Takes language and makes it into objects. - "Refers to representations of speech or thought."

Phonemes

- Each language has a limited set of sounds.

Constucted

- Everything is always already discursive, always already constructed and mediated by language.

Mediated

- Everything is always already discursive, always already constructed and mediated by language.

Students

- Ferdinand de Saussure - Swiss linguist, 1857-1913. Extraordinarily influential. Died without formally publishing his theories on structuralist linguistics. Colleagues/students collected his lectures and published them under the title, Course in General Linguistics in 1916. - Sinifier/Signified -- This link is arbitrary which is difficult for some students to understand.

New Criticism

- Focus upon interpreting / theorizing about the individual text.

Structuralism

- Focus upon interpreting / theorizing about the system. - The method of interpretation. - Analyzes structure. - Structure is more important than function. - Aims to understand texts, concepts, language patterns in relation to other texts, concepts, language patterns. - Believe in systems structured by difference

Diachronic

- Historical. - Works chronologically and so considers how a language, or some other system, changes over time. - Considers development and evolution of language through history.

Parole

- Language as manifested in the actual utterances produced by speakers of a language (contrasted with langue). - Instance performance surface structure individual sentence individual text poem interpretation of individual text.

Grammar

- Language or literature

Poetics

- Literary criticism treating of the nature and laws of poetry.

Author

- No writers make up, all by themselves, the system of writing or the system of any particular kind of writing. - Authors "inherit a repertoire of vocabulary, syntax, genre, and convention, and we might say that they do little more than rearrange the materials they find around them. - Once the words are written, they take on a momentum of their own and trump the now irrelevant author. - Linguistically, the author is never more than the instance writing.

Arbitrary

- Random. - Void of concept or meaning. - Meaning is acquired through language system. - There is NO inherent, natural connection between the signified and the signifier.

Reality

- Reality is linguistic and structured. - We construct reality through discourse. - There is no reality independent of language.

System of Writing

- Roland Barthes published his provocative treatise, "The Death of the Author" (1968) which, essentially, argues "literature is written by the overall system of writing, not by individual authors.

Signifier

- Sound-image. - The spelling of the word. - What the sign represents. - Any word of image.

Levi-Strauss

- Structuralist anthropology. - The development of the theory of structuralism and structural anthropology. - Argues "that stories and myths - and culture in general - are structured by binary oppositions.

Anthropology

- Structure exists in all cultures. - All culture practices have the same or similar counterparts in other cultures.

Defamilarizes

- Term derived from Viktor Shklovsky's theory of ostranenie (or estrangement) that "refers to the way that literature, especially realist or satirical literature, can take familiar things and refresh our perspective on them." - For Shklovsky, defamiliarization exposes the formalist technique of literature, 'baring the device' (the form) and making us more aware of what the literature represents and the literariness in literary writing."

Signified

- The concept that the sign represents.

Langue

- The linguistic system shared by the members of a community (contrasted with parole).

Intertexuality

- The relationship between texts.

Semiotics

- The study of signs and symbols and their use of interpretations.

Referent

- The thing that a word or phrase stands for. - Physical objects like cats, rocks, or trees.

Sign

- The word its self.

Saussure

- Theorized an "overall system of language" rather than focusing on one specific language. - Language is a system of signs, with each sign consisting of a sound-image, which he called a signifier, and a concept that the sound-image represents, which he called a signified. - Saw a firm link between the signifier and the signified.

Death of the Author

- Written by Barthes. - Argues "literature is written by the overall system of writing, not by individual authors." - Authors intentions and biography should hold no weight when interpreting and analyzing their work.