Structuralism and Literature [Theory and Practice]

Structuralism and Literature--Criticism & Theory

[Theory and Practice]

Dr. S. Sree Kumar

Introduction—some definitions.

Structuralism is an intellectual movement which began in France in the 1950s—seen in the works of Claude Levi –Strauss, the anthropologist and Roland Barthes (1915 – 1980). 

►   —a theory of humankind in which all elements of human culture (including literature) are thought to be parts of a system of signs.

►   Robert Scholes has described structuralism as a reaction to “modernist alienation and despair”.

►   “Structuralism is not a new way of interpreting literary works, but an attempt to understand how it is that works have a meaning for us”—Jonathan Culler.

►   “…a method for the study of cultural artefacts”—Roland Barthes.

European structuralists—Roman Jakobson, Claude Levi-Strauss, and Roland Barthes attempted to develop a semiotics (science of signs).

     Barthes tried to recover language and literature from the isolation in which they had been studied and to show that the laws that govern them govern all signs, from road signs to articles of clothing.

Structuralism—largely European phenomenon in origin and development—influenced by American Scholars as well—Noam Chomsky’s idea of ‘deep structures’ and ‘surface structures’ in language.

    Illustrate Structure with an example: “I am teaching a man”—s+v+o- substitute the elements—other languages have different structures.

è Barthes says that structure is a “quite overworked word”—structure in physics and chemistry—structure in poetry (imagery, rhythm, diction etc)—these are traditional modes of analysis— Structuralism as we use in this context is different from these.

è Structure is used in linguistics and anthropology.

è Literary criticism borrowed the term from linguistics.

è The structure of literature has not been discovered or understood. Structuralism is at a primary stage despite some monumental works in the field.

Structuralism—certain basic principles:

1. Behind the innumerable sentences in a language there is a system.

2. Structures are transformable.

3. They are principles which are conventions and shared notions.

4. All the different structures form a totality which is called the system.

5. The system and the structure are not manifest and visible.

6. Those who are only within the system can understand it.

Structuralism heavily influenced by linguistics—pioneering work of Ferdinand de Saussure—Course de linguistique Generale.

è Saussure’s ideas—phoneme (the smallest basic speech sound) exists in two kinds of relationships: diachronic and synchronic. A phoneme has a diachronic (horizontal) relationship with those that precede and follow it in a particular usage, utterance or narrative—Saussure calls this parole (French for “word”). It has a vertical relationship with the entire system of language in which individual usages, utterances, or narratives have meaning—what Saussure called langue (French for “tongue” as in “native tongue” meaning language). Langue is the language system—rules, conventions, and agreements that are shared by everyone in a language community. Parole is an individual utterance in which the principles, conventions, and agreements that make a language operate—differences in parole –examples. “I am teaching a man”. [in literature the text becomes a means to find out the deeper structure— Donne’s poem—alba—‘dawn song’—concept of courtly love—crude analogy of chicken and eggs—new critics worried about eggs; structuralists worried about Chickens]

è ‘Sign’, ‘signifier’, ‘signified’—sign is the basic unit. Sign functions at 2 levels—audio-visual and at the level of comprehension. “rose” is a sign—sound image or acoustic image is the signifier—the signifier can be either phonic or graphic—its function is to signify an idea or concept. The concept/idea is the signified.[ culture is a potential element which enriches or impoverishes the signified part of the sign—‘rose’ and ‘lotus’] [the character in a play or novel is not an individual—literary texts are sign structures, which do not refer to real objects—notion of realism is dismissed as an illusion—the meaning of a literary product is a matter of conventions—(this point is explained below)—structuralism views literature as a totality.

è Study of language either synchronic or diachronic—language is a system whose parts must be considered in their synchronic solidarity—‘man’ in Shakespeare—synchronically studied with reference to the use of the word in other dramas of Shakespeare/other Elizabethans—diachronically studied with reference to historical /etymological antecedents—‘mann’ (OE), plural ‘menn’—inflections for number, gender, and case—other forms are ‘mannes’ ,’mannum’, ‘manna’. [ relevance to literature—a poem has a synchronic relationship with the poems of that period—“study of one work facilitates the study of the next” (Culler)— it has also a diachronic relationship with the pervious poems—and to the concept of poetry itself]

è The relation between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary. There is no natural relation between the word and the concept.—literature is a verbal construct with no relationship to reality—mimetic theories undermined.

è The structuralist critic overlooks biographical evidence, sociological factors as extra literary—Yeats’s relation with Maud Gonne immaterial for the appreciation of his works—separates the poet from the man. “As institution the author is dead.” Barthes—“The Death of the Author”.

Structuralism and literature.

Structuralist aspires for a system. In his Structuralist Poetics, Jonathan Culler asks: What makes a person claim that he has scored a goal? Kicking a ball through the space between two poles cannot be called a goal—certain conditions are necessary for that—other players, a referee, spectators etc.

►   What makes a poem a poem? A person can write a poem because there are others who accept it and recognize it—‘linguistic competence’, necessary to understand language—‘literary competence’ [Culler] necessary to understand a poem/novel/drama etc. [ example]

    “Yesterday I

      Went into town and bought

      A lamp”

►    [‘Yesterday no more refers to any particular day—all yesterdays—sets up a temporal opposition within the poem—‘lamp’ and ‘bought’ symbolic—‘buying’ one mode of acquisition as opposed to others—we expect the poem to be a unified whole and concerned about the sudden ending of the poem—therefore the silence is read as a kind of ironic comment, a blank—the explanation given is only of a general nature—any other explanation will be equally suitable]

►    Another example: ‘Typology of detective fiction’—Todorov. All detective fiction based on one or two murders—the more the merrier—2 stories—the first is the story of the crime. The second is that of the investigation. The characters of the second story do not act; they learn –the rule of the genre postulates the detective’s immunity—the 150 pages which separate the crime from the revelation of the killer are devoted to slow apprenticeship—we examine clue after clue, lead after lead—Agatha Christie’s Murder in the Orient Express offers 12 suspects—12 chapters—12 interrogations—a prologue and an epilogue—a perfect geometric structure.

►   The culprit must not be a professional criminal—one detective, one criminal, and at least one victim (a corpse)—the culprit must have a certain importance—must not be a butler or chambermaid—everything must be rationally explained—there is no scope for the fantastic—no place for psychological analysis.

►   A poem/ novel/ drama is a kind of agreement that members of a society have arrived at.

►   Our understanding of novel, elegy, lyric, short story etc. --–such agreements.

►   The structuralist operates on a piece of literature to find out the underlying structure of that.

►   The structuralist desires a system. This has implications in literary criticism—the aim is to give scientific rationality to literary criticism—to demystify literature—to make literature as scientific as possible.

►   The task of the structuralist is to analyse a work of art and define the underlying literary structures. “The task of structural analysis is to formulate the underlying systems of convention which enable cultural objects to have meaning for us. In this sense structuralism is

►   Structuralism originally is a method in which language can be studied—literature is a special use of the language; therefore its structure can be understood only with reference to the language.

►   In grammatical analysis a sentence can be related to a particular structure. But structuralist criticism cannot relate a work to a structure in the literary system because there is no well defined structure or system.

Merits and drawbacks:

1. Structuralism gives insight into the basis and process of understanding. But it also fails to give convincing answers.
2. Confronting literature is confronting a complex human experience and the failure of any system to explain it is understandable.
3. The process of “dissection and articulation” (Barthes) can become very monotonous and mechanical.
4. The structuralists depend too much on linguistics.
5. Structuralism tries to demystify the creative process.

What the structuralists do?

1. They analyse prose narratives, relating the text to some larger containing structure’ such as:

1. the conventions of a particular literary genre,  [genre studies]or
2. a network of intertextual connections [ intertextuality], or
3. a projected model of the underlying universal narrative structure,
4. A notion of narrative as a complex of recurrent patterns or motifs. [narratology]

Practice—Barthes S/Z—a study of “Sarrasine”

A controversial work –-John Sturrock says: S/Z is full of “powerful insights into the way fiction works”.

Jonathan Culler says: “it has been and will continue as a seminal work”.

John Updike says: “…an unreadable book about reading”, “a two-hundred page crawl through a thirty page story”

“Sarrasine” a story by Balzac— S/Z --217 page explication of a 34 page story—the first operation is the division of the story into lexias— small units for reading—arbitrary—each lexia may contain three / four meanings— Barthes divides the story into 561 lexias—Barthes identifies the meaning- making factors or codes—total 5 in number.

1. Proairetic code—code of actions—entering a room, opening the door etc. Actions occur and reoccur—they can be called plot-making codes.
2. Hermeneutic code—puzzles and questions—the title of the story itself is a puzzle—Barthes asks: “What is Sarrasine? A noun? A name? A thing? A woman?” This question will be answered much later.
3. The Semantic code — ( semic code or connotative code)—the title  Sarrasine—an additional connotation—femininity—concentration of semantic codes around a particular proper name can make a character—in fact a character is made up of all the codes acting together.
4. The symbolic code—it can account for emotional states of the mind—furnishes the field to decide the theme.
5. The referential code—references to a science or a body of knowledge—draws attention to them.

►   Barthes’s reading may be unacceptable to many—demonstrates that the text is finite—it exists within the infiniteness of codes—writing involves the bringing together of these codes and transforming them into visible forms.

►   Barthes changes the concept of character in fiction—the usual practice of considering the character as an individual is out of place in Barthes—proper names act like a magnetic field, character is created.

►   Barthes shows that the text is a system, consisting of meaning making elements.

►   However, Barthes’s method does not solve all the problems—Can the system be applied to all types of books?—there can be many sub codes, and their number, complexity and weaving can decide the nature and function of a work of literary significance.

    There may be some alignment problems with this piece. In fact, this material is taken from a power-point presentation.

 

[Dr. S. Sree Kumar, Reader, Postgraduate and Research Department of English, Government Arts College, Coimbatore-641018. kumarbpc@yahoo.co.uk  cell no.      94430 53250]