Modul Literary Criticism

MEETING 5:
STRUCTURALISM

A. GOALS OF STUDY
This chapter explains about structuralism. You will have to be able to:
1.1 Define and explain structuralism
1.2 Apply structuralism in analysis

B. MATERIAL DESCRIPTION

Defining Structuralism
In literary theory, structuralist criticism relates literary texts to a
larger structure, which may be a particular genre, a range of intertextual
connections, a model of a universal narrative structure, or a system of
recurrent patterns or motifs. Structuralism argues that there must be a structure
in every text, which explains why it is easier for experienced readers than for
non-experienced readers to interpret a text. Hence, everything that is written
seems to be governed by specific rules, or a "grammar of literature", that one
learns in educational institutions and that are to be unmasked.
Structuralism, theory that uses culturally interconnected signs to
reconstruct systems of relationships rather than studying isolated, material
things in themselves. This method found wide use from the early 20th century.
In a variety of fields, especially linguistics, particularly as formulated by
Ferdinand de Saussure and Roman Jacobson. Anthropologist Claude Lévi-
Strauss used structuralism to study the kinship systems of different societies.
No single element in such a system has meaning except as an integral part of a
set of structural connections. These interconnections are said to be binary in
nature and are viewed as the permanent, organizational categories of
experience. Structuralism has been influential in literary criticism and history,
as with the work of Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault

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Like the "New Criticism," "Structuralism" sought to bring to literary

studies a set of objective criteria for analysis and a new intellectual rigor.
"Structuralism" can be viewed as an extension of "Formalism" in that that both
"Structuralism" and "Formalism" devoted their attention to matters of literary
form (i.e. structure) rather than social or historical content; and that both
bodies of thought were intended to put the study of literature on a scientific,
objective basis. "Structuralism" relied initially on the ideas of the Swiss
linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure. Like Plato, Saussure regarded the signifier
(words, marks, symbols) as arbitrary and unrelated to the concept, the
signified, to which it referred. Within the way a particular society uses
language and signs, meaning was constituted by a system of "differences"
between units of the language. Particular meanings were of less interest than
the underlying structures of signification that made meaning itself possible,
often expressed as an emphasis on "langue" rather than "parole."
"Structuralism" was to be a metalanguage, a language about languages, used
to decode actual languages, or systems of signification. The work of the
"Formalist" Roman Jakobson contributed to "Structuralist" thought, and the
more prominent Structuralists included Claude Levi-Strauss in anthropology,
Tzvetan Todorov, A.J. Greimas, Gerard Genette, and Barthes.
Structuralists got the notion that everything could be analyzed in
terms of a deep structure from the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. He came up
with this idea that language is a "sign system" made up of unchanging patterns
and rules. The structuralists who were influenced by Saussure took that deep
structure idea even deeper: If underlying patterns or structures govern
language (they said), doesn't that mean that underlying patterns or structures
shape all human experience? Structuralism theorists are interested in
identifying and analyzing the structures that underlie all cultural phenomena
and not just literature. They want to understand the "deep structure" of football
games. Of families. Of political systems. Of fashion. Of chemistry classes and
of theory study guides. Because structuralism emerged from linguistics,
theorists from this school make a big deal about language. But for

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structuralists language can be any form of signaling not just speech or

words, but anything that involves communication.
When it comes to literature, structuralist theorists care about
discovering the structures or rules that govern groups of literary works. So
when we talk about the narrative elements of a novel, for example things
like plot, character, conflict, setting, point of view we're borrowing the
structuralist idea that there are certain principles or structures that can be
found in all novels. The same goes for other types of literature. Whether we're
talking about epic poetry, or tragic drama, or postmodern literature, we're
assuming that there are certain "structures" that these texts have in common
with one another.
A potential problem of structuralist interpretation is that it can be
highly reductive, as scholar Catherine Belsey puts it: "the structuralist danger
of collapsing all difference." An example of such a reading might be if a
student concludes the authors of West Side Story did not write anything
"really" new, because their work has the same structure as Shakespeare's
Romeo and Juliet. In both texts a girl and a boy fall in love (a "formula" with a
symbolic operator between them would be "Boy + Girl") despite the fact that
they belong to two groups that hate each other ("Boy's Group - Girl's Group"
or "Opposing forces") and conflict is resolved by their death. Structuralist
readings focus on how the structures of the single text resolve inherent
narrative tensions. If a structuralist reading focuses on multiple texts, there
must be some way in which those texts unify themselves into a coherent
system. The versatility of structuralism is such that a literary critic could make
the same claim about a story of two friendly families ("Boy's Family + Girl's
Family") that arrange a marriage between their children despite the fact that
the children hate each other ("Boy - Girl") and then the children commit
suicide to escape the arranged marriage; the justification is that the second
story's structure is an 'inversion' of the first story's structure: the relationship
between the values of love and the two pairs of parties involved have been
reversed.

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Structuralistic literary criticism argues that the "literary banter of a

text" can lie only in new structure, rather than in the specifics of character
development and voice in which that structure is expressed. Literary
structuralism often follows the lead of Vladimir Propp, Algirdas Julien
Greimas, and Claude Lévi-Strauss in seeking out basic deep elements in
stories, myths, and more recently, anecdotes, which are combined in various
ways to produce the many versions of the ur-story or ur-myth.
There is considerable similarity between structural literary theory
and Northrop Frye's archetypal criticism, which is also indebted to the
anthropological study of myths. Some critics have also tried to apply the
theory to individual works, but the effort to find unique structures in
individual literary works runs counter to the structuralist program and has an
affinity with New Criticism.

Characteristics of Structuralism
Structural analysis is an approach to understand a literary work
which has several characteristics. Sapardi Djoko Damono (1978:38) in his
book Sosiologi Sastra: Sebuah pengantar Ringkas, writes four characteristics
of structuralism as follows:
1. A literary work is viewed as a unity as a totality. The totality of its
elements is the most important in this approach. It is not the elements of the
totality, which becomes the analysis but the relationship among the elements.
2. structuralism does not analyze surface structure and the deep
structure what is seen and what is heard are not the real structure but only the
evidence exist.
3. The analysis done by the structuralism involves synchronic
structure not a diachronic one. The analysis involves synchronic structure not
a diachronic one. The attention focused on the existing relationship in a certain
time and not in a chronological time. The synchronic structure is not based on
the structural analysis.

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4. Structuralism is an anti-causal approach. In analyzing, the

structuralism never uses the meaning of cause and effect. They do not believe
in beca se affec s la and onl belie e in s r c ral rela ionship.

C. QUESTIONS FOR EXERCISE/ASSIGNMENT

1. Define what a structuralism is!
2. Give a brief summary about brief development of structuralism!

D. REFERENCES
Books

Barry, Peter. 2009. Beginning Theory An Introduction to Literary and

Cultural Theory (Third Edition). Manchester: Manchester University
Press

DiYanni, Robert. 2001. Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry, and Drama

(Compact Edition). Boston: McGraw-Hill

Guerin, et.al. 1992. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature (Third

Edition). New York: Oxford University Press

Newton, K.M. (editor). 1997. Twentieth Century Literary Theory: A Reader

(Second Edition). USA: ST. Martin Press

Wolfreys, Julian (editor). 2001. Introducing Literary Theories: A Guide and

Glossary. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press

Link and Sites:

Free Dictionary. Structuralism (on-line), thefreedictionary com.

http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/structuralism
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IEP. Literary Criticism (on-line), iep.utm.edu.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/literary/
diakses tanggal 5 September 2016

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Shmoop. Structuralism (on-line), schmoop com.

http://www.shmoop.com/structuralism/
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Sapardi Djoko Damono (1978:38). Sosiologi Sastra: Sebuah pengantar

Ringkas (on-line), kotagede-literature.blogspot.co.id. http://kotagede-
literature.blogspot.co.id/2008/04/characteristics-of-structuralism.html
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Wikipedia. Structuralism (on-line), Wikipedia Org.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuralism
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