Structuralism

created by Kristen Raczka


General Definition/Overview of Theory

A modern intellectual movement that analyses cultural phenomena according to principles derived from linguistics, emphasizing the systematic interrelationships among elements of any human activity, and thus abstract codes and conventions governing the social production of meanings. […] structuralism argues that the elements composing any cultural phenomenon (from cooking to drama) are similarly ‘relational’: that is, they have meaning only by virtue of their contrasts with other elements of the system, especially in binary oppositions of paired opposites. Their meaning can be established not by referring each element to any supposed equivalent in natural reality, but only by analysing its function within a self-contained cultural code. Accordingly, structuralist analysis seeks the underlying system or langue that governs individual utterances or instances. […]

Structuralism and its ‘science of signs’ […] are derived chiefly from the linguistic theories of Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), and partly from Russian Formalism and […] Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale (1928). It flourished in France in the 1960s, following the widely discussed applications of structural analysis to mythology by anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. In the study of literary works, structuralism is distinguished by its rejection of those traditional notions according to which literature ‘expresses’ an author’s meaning or ‘reflects’ reality. Structuralist criticism is less interested in interpreting what literary works mean than in explaining how they can mean what they mean; that is, in showing what implicit rules and conventions are operating in a given work. […] The French critic Roland Barthes was an outstanding practitioner of structuralist literary analysis of wrestling, striptease, and other phenomena in Mythologies (1957) […]. For more extended accounts of this enterprise, consult Terence Hawkes, Structuralism and Semiotics (1977), Jonathan Culler, Structuralist Poetics (1975), and Robert Scholes, Structuralism in Literature: An Introduction (1974).
(Baldick 245-246)

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Important People/Key Terms


Ferdinand de Saussure

A language is a system of differences. So declares Ferdinand de Saussure, a Swiss linguist of the early twentieth century whose work has been crucial to contemporary theory. What makes each element of a language what it is, what gives it its identity, are the contrasts between it and other elements within the system of the language. Saussure offers an analogy: a train – say the 8:30 London-to-Oxford express – depends for its identity on the system of trains, as described in the railway timetable. So the 8:30 London-to-Oxford express is distinguished from the 9:30 London-to-Cambridge express and the 8:45 Oxford local. What counts are not any of the physical features of a particular train: the engine, the carriages, the exact route, the personnel, and so on may all vary, as may the times of departure and arrival; the train may leave and arrive late. What gives the train its identity is its place in the system of trains; it is this train, as opposed to the others. As Saussure says of the linguistic sign, ‘Its most precise characteristic is to be what the others are not.’ Similarly, the letter b may be written in any number of different ways (think of people’s handwriting), so long as it is not confused with other letters, such as l, k, and d. What is crucial is not any particular form or content, but differences, which enable it to signify.

(“Literary Theory” 57-58)
 
Langue/Parole and Diachronic/Synchronic

Parole: any particular meaningful use of spoken or written language (also called "performance")
Langue: the underlying system of sounds, forms, and rules of combination of a language which make meaningful communication possible (a speaker's implicit knowledge of this system is called "competence")
(McManus)

Saussure distinguishes the system of a language (la langue) from particular instances of speech and writing (parole). The task of linguistics is to reconstruct the underlying system (or grammar) of a language that makes possible the speech events or parole. This involves a further distinction between synchronic study of a language (focusing on a language as a system at a particular time, present or past) and diachronic study, which looks at the historical changes to particular elements of the language. To understand a language as a functioning system is to look at it synchronically, trying to spell out the rules and conventions of the system that make possible the forms and meanings of the language.
(“Literary Theory” 60)

Sign/Signifier/Signified

A sign, [Saussure] declares, is not simply the name for a thing but a complex whole which links a sound-image and a concept.
(Scholes 15)

Sign: composed of the union of
          -  signifier: sequence of sounds or marks on a page (e.g., c-h-a-i-r)
          -  signified: concept or meaning (idea of a chair)
This whole sign stands in an arbitrary relation to its referent, an externally existing object or action (the actual object on which I am sitting); this relation exists only because it is conventionally agreed upon within a particular language community. Saussure felt that linguistics must bracket off the real object, direct their study away from the referent and concentrate solely on the sign in order to fully understand the workings of language.
(McManus)

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Saussure’s work suggested that language provides no direct access to reality because itself is based on difference between the signifier (the sound or appearance of the word) and the signified (the meaning or concept of the word). Signifier and signified are not the same; the words “s-n-o-w” is not snow itself but rather a representation of signifier of the tiny white frozen crystals we call snow. The signifier represents the signified, but is not identical to it, and in the process of representation lies the possibility for veiling, distortion, and obfuscation. Language is constructed on the basis of difference, on the relationship of signifier to signified and of words to each other, not on the basis of a direct correspondence to reality. This can be seen if the usual contexts for snow are reversed. “The snow melted as the temperature dropped” is technically a sentence which nevertheless throws the reader into consternation about the meaning of snow.
(Appleby, Hunt, and Jacob 214)

For Saussure, a language is a system of signs and the key fact is what he calls the arbitrary nature of the linguistic sign. This means two things. First, the sign (for instance, a word) is a combination of a form (the ‘signifier’) and a meaning (the ‘signified’), and the relation between form and meaning is based on convention, not natural resemblance. What I am sitting on is called a chair but could perfectly well have been called something else – wab or punce. It’s a convention or rule of English that it is one rather than the other; in other languages it would have quite different names.
(“Literary Theory” 58)

Vladimir Propp

In The Morphology of the Folktale (1968) Vladimir Propp, for example, develops a “narrative syntax.” Morphology means the study of forms, as in botany, which Propp uses as a model. Comparing Russian Folktales involving magic, Propp discovers predictable patterns of “functions,” actions by characters that further the plot in regular ways. […] Though no folktale includes all thirty-one functions, those that occur in any tale always appear in the same order and contribute in similar ways. […] The idea is to construct a “grammar” of narrative based on plot structures, character types, and genres.
(Cowles 93-94)

To search for the general structure of the myth he takes several versions of one and the same tale and traces changes and development in those versions. Propp tries to arrive at a typology of narrative structures. By analyzing types of characters and kinds of action in a hundred traditional Russian folk tales, Propp was able to arrive at the conclusion that there were just thirty-one generic "narratemes." While not all are present in every tale, he found that all the tales he analyzed displayed the functions in unvarying sequence.
[…]
Unlike Saussure, Propp's attention was not focused on the meaning of the signifier and its relation to others, but on the function realized by the signifier within systems of narration. Propp investigated the rules of the constitution of discourse and offered a constant model in different plots. While Saussure elaborated the transmission between form and content, Propp sought the repetition of a constant function, i.e. the stagnant tie between signifier and signified. According to the second principle of Propp's morphology, "the order of the function is always one and the same" (Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, p. 25).
(Olshansky)

For example, in the Morphology of the Folktale (1928), Vladimir Propp set out to show for a group of 150 Russian folk tales that all of them could be generically classified in terms of thirty one narrative functions distributed among seven dramatis personae. Each story is comprised of a subset of the thirty one functions occurring - remarkably enough - in an invariant order. This interesting classificatory achievement becomes fascinating as soon as it is realized that Propp's empirically derived classification appears to fit an indefinite number of stories - oral, written, enacted or filmed - and from diverse cultures.

Little Red Riding Hood [in some versions : Little Red Cap] for example, begins in a way which, some ordering problems aside, you will have no difficulty in assigning to the first eight of Propp's functions, as they follow on from the delineation of what Propp calls the `initial situation':
  1. One of the members of a family absents himself/herself from home.
  2. An interdiction [prohibition] is addressed to the hero.
  3. The interdiction is violated.
  4. The villain makes an attempt at reconnaissance.
  5. The villain receives information about the victim.
  6. The villain attempts to deceive the victim in order to take possession of the victim or their belongings.
  7. The victim submits to deception and thereby unwittingly helps the villain.
  8. The villain causes harm or injury to a member of the family.
 (Pateman)

Roland Barthes

More than any other scholar, Barthes has concerned himself with the pervasiveness of codes and coding in human experience. […] He finds, for instance, in modern France an active codification of clothing, furniture, food, and many other aspects of ordinary life.
(Scholes 249)

Codes

Culturally determined patterns of conventions and meanings that order our interpretations and perceptions.
(Cowles 306)

The idea of codes comes from Roman Jakobson’s famous communication model. Jakobson […] identifies six essential elements in communication. Most simply, a sender directs a message to a receiver through a contact (voice, telephone, printed page, facial expression) and within a context (the physical and psychological environment). All of this is framed within certain codes, or culturally shared patterns of meaning. […] Though individuals in a society may think and behave differently (parole), each must behave and act within a limited number of codes (langue) offered by the culture.

For one thing, each genre and subgenre follows its own unique conventions. […] Codes tell us how to make sense of texts, and they help us relate texts to other aspects of our experience.
(Cowles 91-92, 94)

Barthes distinguishes five ‘codes’ which are applied in the reading of a text, each of which is a ‘perspective of citations’ or a general semantic model which enables one to pick out items as belonging to the functional space which the code designates. That is to say, the codes enable one to identify elements and class them together under particular functions. […] For Barthes, as for Lévi-Strauss, codes are determined by their homogeneity – they group together items of a single kind – and by their explanatory function. The number of codes can therefore vary according to the perspective chosen and the nature of the texts one is analysing.
(“Structuralist Poetics” 202-203)

1. The proairetic code, or code of actions. Under this code we can consider every action in a story from the opening of a door to an orgy of musicians. Actions […] begin at one point and end at another. In a story they interlock and overlap, but in the classic text they are all completed at the end.

2. The hermeneutic code, or code of puzzles. Like the codes of actions, this is an aspect narrative syntax. Whenever questions are raised (Who is that? What does this mean?) which the story will ultimately answer, we have an element of the hermeneutic code.

3. The cultural codes. Under this heading Barthes groups the whole system of knowledge and value invoked by a text. These appear as nuggets of proverbial wisdom, scientific “truths,” the various stereotypes of understanding which constitute human “reality.”

4. The connotative codes. These are the themes of the fiction. As they organize themselves around a particular proper name they constitute a “character,” which is simply the same name accompanied by the same attributes.

5. The symbolic field. This is the field of “theme” as we usually understand the world in Anglo-American criticism: the idea or ideas around which a work is constructed.
(Scholes 154-155)

Claude Lévi-Strauss

- French anthropologist after WWII
- Examined myths and other cultural practices synchronically
- Identified binary oppositions in every aspect of human culture – the human mind naturally operates using such oppositions
(Cowles 90-91)

Binary Oppositions

Patterns of opposites (good/evil, male/female, civilized/uncivilized, light/dark, etc.) that structure our thinking. The first term always occupies a privileged position.
(Cowles 305)

A structuralist studies activities as diverse as food preparation and serving rituals, religious rites, games, literary and non-literary texts, and other forms of entertainment to discover the deep structures by which meaning is produced and reproduced within a culture. For example, an early and prominent practitioner of structuralism, anthropologist and ethnographer Claude Lévi-Strauss, analyzed cultural phenomena including mythology, kinship, and food preparation. 

Lévi-Strauss explained that opposites are at the basis of social structure and culture. […] Later in his most popular work The Raw and the Cooked he described the widely dispersed folk tales of tribal South America as all related to one another through a series of transformations--as one opposite in tales here changed into another opposite in tales there. For example, as the title implies, Raw becomes its opposite Cooked. These particular opposites (Raw/Cooked) are symbolic of human culture itself, in which by means of thought and labor, raw materials become clothes, food, weapons, art, ideas. Culture, explained Lévi-Strauss, is a dialectic process: thesis, antithesis, synthesis.
(“Structuralism”)

Among later structuralists, the most famous, Claude Lévi-Strauss, believes that underlying structures - whether in kinship systems, myths, rituals or objects such as masks - are evidence for the way the mind works. He assumes […] that the human mind always and everywhere works in the same ways. For Lévi-Strauss, following in the footsteps of another linguist, Roman Jakobson, the leading idea is that the human mind operates in terms of binary oppositions and that such oppositions structure all the phenomena of human culture. Myths, for example, provide an imaginary resolution of the contradictions into which our binary ways of thinking lead us. So the Oedipus myth is a meditation on the conflict between a society's belief that human beings spring from the earth (autochthony) and the evident fact that they are born of the union of man and woman. The Oedipus myth makes sense of this opposition by putting it into parallel with the opposition between overvaluing blood relations (Oedipus's incest) and undervaluing them (Oedipus's patricide).
[…]
Binary oppositions are at work in plastic art too. In one of his most accessible books, The Way of the Masks, Lévi -Strauss seeks to show for the masks of the Indian tribes of the northwest coast of North America that those masks which are plastically similar in different tribes are linked to myths with opposite meanings, whereas masks which are opposite are associated with similar myths. So the Kwakiutl mask of Dzonokwa and the Cowichan Swaihwe mask are plastically opposites: one is black, the other white; one has sunken, the other protuberant eyes; one has no tongue, the other a noticeably large one; etc. But they are linked to similar myths: both Dzonokwa and Swaihwe are the source of riches.
(Pateman)

Examples of Application

Snowed Up - The author of the article admits at the end that she does not so much analyze “Snowed Up” as a structuralist but instead provides background and possible ways to analyze the story. However, she does present ways of think about binary oppositions and Jakobson’s communication model.

Snow White - There is one section in the beginning that briefly discusses structuralism. The figure is helpful in defining structure and thinking about how structure helps to form genres.

Romeo and Juliet example in brief
When used to examine literature, a structuralist critic will examine the underlying relation of elements (the ‘structure’) in, say, a story, rather than focusing on its content. A basic example [is] the similarities between West Side Story and Romeo and Juliet. Even though the two plays occur in different times and places, a structuralist would argue that they are the same story because they have a similar structure – in both cases, a girl and a boy fall in love (or, as we might say, are +Love) despite the fact that they belong to two groups that hate each other, a conflict that is resolved by their death. Consider now the story of two friendly families (+LOVE) that make an arranged marriage between their children despite the fact that they hate each other (-LOVE), and that the children resolve this conflict by committing suicide to escape the marriage. A structuralist would argue this second story is an 'inversion' of the first, because the relationship between the values of love and the two pairs of parties involved have been reversed. In sum, a structuralist would thus argue that the 'meaning' of a story lies in uncovering this structure rather than, say, discovering the intention of the author who wrote it.
(“Strucutralism”)

*Also refer to the Sample Papers provided in the textbook (The Critical Experience) on pages 97-103. The first Sample Paper examines binary oppositions in “The Kingfisher” by Leslie Norris, and the second paper examines codes in The Princess Bride by William Goldman.

Article/Summary


 Structuralism as a Method of Literary Criticism

Summary

Isaiah Smithson divides his article into four parts. In the first part he defines the term structure so that he may refer to it throughout the article without the reader’s being confused. Then Smithson defines what he thinks are four main principles of structuralism and provides a brief description of these principles. Thirdly, he acknowledges the disadvantages of structuralism, but he dismisses all but one of the disadvantages he proposes. Finally he presents a synchronic structuralist analysis of D.H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow, which demonstrates the advantages of the theory according to Smithson.

When defining the term structure, Smithson refers to psychology and Jean Piaget’s definition that a structure is a “‘system on transformations’” (145). In terms of literary criticism, this definition means that the elements of a system connect to one another, and when one changes the others change as well. The idea of the transformations allows the system to be able to change but still remain the same. For example, dogs can be many shapes, sizes, and breeds but we are able to categorize all breeds of dog under the word dog. In this example, the system would be the category of dog, and the transformations that it might undergo would be the breeds. While I provided a simple example of structure above, Smithson uses the example of D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love to explain the structure of a novel in the same manner that I have done with the dog example.

Once Smithson has defined structure, he is able to define what he considers the four main principles of structuralism. The first principle is “the emphasis on relations,” stressing not the parts of a structure or even the structure itself but the relations within a structure that make it such (146). Smithson concludes that “an investigation into the relations that hold among the constituent units will necessarily force ‘information’ to emerge that is different from that which would result from a concentration on the elements themselves or on the wholes which they form” (147). The second principle consists of the “synchronic/diachronic distinction” [remember that synchronic is in the present and diachronic is change over time], and Smithson argues that structuralists are concerned with the synchronic readings of literature as opposed to the diachronic readings (“‘relations across a moment in time, rather than through time’”) (147). The third principle states that “the structure of the work will be something other than that which is immediately evident on the “‘surface’” (148). For this principle, a literary critic employing structuralism must “dissect” a work into its “elements” and “articulate” the structures that the elements and their relations with one another represent in order to discover what seems to be “‘invisible’” or unconscious (148). The forth principle discusses the “universality” of structuralism, and Smithson argues that if structuralism can be used over a broad range of discipline than the structures, too, must be universal (149). He uses Claude Lévi-Strauss and his work with structuralism in anthropology as an example. However, Lévi-Strauss determined that “the laws according to which humans learn and use language are not consciously known” but if language is studies in scientific terms they can be “derived and analyzed” (149). With these four principles, Smithson analyses D.H. Lawrence’s novel The Rainbow.

However, before Smithson’s analysis, which he believes will display the advantages of structuralism, he first acknowledges that there are disadvantages to the theory, though he dismisses all but one of them. The disadvantages that Smithson easily dismisses include the involvement of assumptions (all theories “will entail assumptions”) and the variety of structures that can be found by different structuralists (“different critics are always going to develop different interpretations”) (151). Smithson also raises the one “serious” disadvantage that structuralism does not aid in the evaluation of literary works “because structural ‘criticism can do no more than test for a validity that is defined by a work’s possession of a ‘coherent system of signs’’” (151). While Smithson acknowledges these disadvantages, he does not give the arguments much weight and proceeds to his analysis and the advantages.

Smithson’s “synchronic analysis” of Lawrence’s The Rainbow is divided into three parts (152). The first establishes that he is analyzing the binary opposition of “male/female conflicts” (152). He divides the work by the four couples and states that while each couple is a “variation” or “transformation” of the male/female conflict, they all stem from the same basic structure of male/female conflict. The second part explores the element of self-realization by one member of three of the couples; this element, Smithson argues, contributes “to the transformations of the structures” (153). In the third section of the analysis, Smithson connects the male/female conflicts and the search for self-realization to society’s patriarchal structure. In his analysis, Smithson found commonalities among four variations of a structure, examined the element that allowed for change in the structure, and displayed the universality of structuralism by applying the structure to society or reality. Smithson concludes the article by stating that structuralism “gives an insight into […] the structure of the reader’s experience of a literary work” and reiterates the argument that “structuralism is able to bring to consciousness what has previously been experienced unconsciously” (158-159).

Reading Questions

1. What are some of the binary oppositions found in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet? What can be said about these oppositions? Do they connect to one another?

2. How does reading R&J and King Lear in 2010 affect our interpretation of the play versus placing the play in its historical context?

3. How might you perform a Structuralist reading of “Snowed Up?” Would you use binary oppositions or codes? What aspects of the story would you explore? Would you connect your findings to society?

4. What codes can be established when comparing King Lear and A Thousand Acres? What kind of structure do these two texts create?

5. How might the genre of both Shakespeare’s plays and Smiley’s novel influence the way we read them? What kind of structure is established through these three works?

6. Why does a structuralist analysis of a text have to be read synchronically as opposed to diachronically?

Websites

Chess – read this article to find out more about Saussure and his chess analogy – clear and helpful in defining basic terms for Saussure

Propp – read the article about Propp and his work with fairytales from the Toronto Slavic Quarterly

Pateman – read a quick article that provides a general overview of the theory and its founders

Notes and Terms– two short overviews; both provide terms and a quick definition of the theory and even an example or two on how to apply it

General Overview – Yes, the information is from Wikipedia, but as a general overview and for some examples, not completely bad

Annotated Bibliography

Appleby, Joyce, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob. Telling the Truth About History. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, 1994. Print.

            This book is one of my history textbooks, and I decided to use it because I think it does an adequate job of explaining the terms signifier and signified for someone who may not be familiar with literary theory. The section used for this study guide provides an example that is clear and easy to understand. However, as the book was written by historians and not members of the English discipline, it should not be relied upon as the best definition of these terms. The authors of this book provided these definitions to suit their own agenda, which may be slightly different from the terms under Saussure’s theory.

Baldick, Chris. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Print.

            This book is a dictionary of literary terms, so it is not solely about structuralism. However, the definition that it provides was one of the best and most understandable, in my opinion. It includes all of the major founders of structuralism that I have included in the study guide as well as introduces terms that are later explained in further detail throughout the guide. The end of the definition also provides books for further reading, which, with the exception of one, appear in this bibliography.

Cowles, David. The Critical Experience. 2nd ed. Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 1994. Print.

            This book is the English 274 textbook, and provides a good overview of the theory. The section on Saussure and his theory helps to establish the basis of the theory. However, in general the section on structuralism seems to be trying to convey a lot of information in too small of a space, which creates confusion in understanding of the theory. On the other hand, it contains a glossary in the back to help define key terms. The end of the section also provides two sample papers that analyze two different pieces of literature from a structuralist perspective. The papers also focus on different aspects of structuralism; one is a reading involving binary oppositions, and the other is a reading involving codes.

Cowley, Julian. “‘Snowed Up’: A Structuralist Reading.” Literary Theories: A Case Study in Critical Performance. Eds. Julian Wolfreys and William Baker. New York: New York University Press, 1996. 41-56. Web. 06 Nov. 2010.

            This is a chapter from another one of English 274’s classroom resources in which the author performs a structuralist reading on the short story introduced at the beginning of the book. However, Cowley does not perform a structuralist reading of the story, and she admits it at the end of the article. Instead, she provides a basic overview of the theory and its many dimensions while providing examples of each dimension through ‘Snowed Up.’ The article is helpful for understanding how one might go about analyzing a piece of literature with structuralism, but it does not provide an actual analysis of the story. I thought this article would be helpful, though, as it was the only example I could find dealing with a work from class.

Culler, Jonathan. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Print.

            As the title suggests, this book provides an introduction to literary theory, meaning that it does not go in depth on the theory of structuralism but gives an overview of it. However, the examples in this book are helpful and very clear. The author provides an analogy of a train to help readers understand Saussure’s ideas, and he also provides simple examples to help put Saussure’s ideas into a more understandable context. It should also be noted that Culler is a structuralist scholar and has written a book on structuralism, meaning that the overview of structuralism in this book was written by someone well-versed in the theory.

Culler, Jonathan. Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975. Print.

            This book is entirely about the foundation of structuralism as a literary theory. It provides extended overviews of the men who founded structuralism, including those not mentioned in this study guide, and their theories as well as connecting those ideas and concepts to structuralism in the literary realm. However, the book is older than my others, but as structuralism is not practiced extensively today, it has not changed much, though it may have expanded since the writing of this book. The book is understandable but dense, and is not the best for providing a quick overview but more suited for an extended reading of a particular founder’s ideas and the application of those ideas.

Golden, Joanne M. and Donna Canan. “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall”: Readers’ Reflections on Literature through Literary Theories.” The English Journal. 93.5 (2004): 42-46. JSTOR. Web. 06 Nov. 2010.

            Only one section of this article is relevant for this study guide. However, it provides a figure that breaks down the functions of the well-known fairytale Snow White to reveal a basic structure that is followed by all or almost all versions. The structuralism section also provides a brief overview of the theory, outlining some key terms and the origins of the theory. This article seemed useful because it was created by a teacher and a professor for two sophomore English classes.

Julian.  “How Board Games Explain Everything – Part 1: Structuralism:



McManus, Barbara F. “Notes.” Structuralist Approaches. N.p. 1998. Web. 06 Nov. 2010.

            This webpage provides a brief overview of the theory (general definition), key terms (binary oppositions, langue, and parole), and founders (Propp). It was created for classroom purposes, but it does not involve extensive defining of the theory. The site also provides an example of how one might perform a structuralist reading of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening.

Olshansky, Dmitry. “The Birth of Structuralism from the Analysis of Fairy-Tales.” Toronto Slavic Quarterly. 25 (2008): n. pag. Web. 06 Nov. 2010.

            This article focuses mainly on Propp’s contribution to structuralism through his work with fairytales. It provides an overview of his work, but does not contain a listing of the thirty-one functions that Propp found during his research. The article focuses on the contribution and analysis of Russian Formalism to structuralism. The article was published by a college journal and is a more recent publication, both of which add to the reliability of the article.

Pateman, Trevor. “Structuralism and Narrative.” Trevor Pateman: Selected Works. N.p. 2010. Web. 06 Nov. 2010.

            The author of this article has written other articles dealing with structuralism, but this one is the most relevant to the study guide as it provides a general overview of the theory and the ideas of its founders, including Propp and Lévi-Strauss. It also provides some basic examples of founding ideas for reader comprehension. The author of the article is a professor, and the article was recently updated, making it reliable. However, the bottom of the article states that it is part of a larger work, and any missing details may hinder its clarity, though it does not appear to be unclear.

Scholes, Robert. Structuralism in Literature: an Introduction. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974. Print.

            This book provides an extensive examination of the theory of structuralism. It examines all aspects of structuralism including founders and their theories and how those theories contributed to the general theory. This book was published in 1974, but as it provides history on the theory, it cannot be considered out of date for this study guide. The author is also a leading figure in modern writings of structuralism, making this book reliable for the study guide. The book is not too dense to understand, but the explanations of the ideas of the theory’s founders are lengthy. However, the book does explain the connections between theories and thoroughly examines and explains all aspects of those theories. Overall, the book should be consulted for further explanation of the theory and its history.



This webpage provides a brief overview of the theory (general definition), key terms (binary oppositions, sign, signifier, and signified), and major founders. However, the website does not offer any description of the founders’ ideas. However, it provides another way to look at terms and the general definition of structuralism for students. It was created by a professor for classroom purposes, but it does not involve extensive defining of the theory.

Smithson, Isaiah. “Structuralism as a Method of Literary Criticism.” College English. 37.2 (1975): 145-159. JSTOR. Web. 06 Nov. 2010.

            This article is the one which I have provided a summary for in the study guide. It was published in 1975, but demonstrates a clear example of a structuralist reading. The author’s agenda is made clear in the first paragraph, and he follows it well, stating how connections are made from one idea to another. However, some of the terminology is unclear and it is helpful if the reader has some outside knowledge of key figures in structuralism and even psychology (Jean Piaget). The author also dismisses the disadvantages of structuralism that he proposes, although he writes a good example of a structural analysis of D.H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow. This article helps to define exactly how a structuralist reading would be structured.