English
Poetry of the XIX and XX Centuries. Factultad de Filología. Universitat de Valencia.
Professor:
Dr. Vicente Forés
Student: Marcos A. Palao Contreras
An
approach
I
shall try to comment on the Structuralist method or view of literary theory,
but as it’s a very broad theory, I shall give a general idea of the proposals
and some examples applied to poetry we’ve been working on.
This
theory was (re)started applied to linguistics in the early 20th
century with the work of Saussure and which has developed all along the century
in the works of other authors such as Roland Barthes or Levy Strauss and
specially Gerard Genette (WP, Structuralism).
Structuralism
comes out of the notion of structure and it is originally linked to linguistics
as Saussure, in his “Course de linguistique générale”, developed it as a system
of signs (WP, Course de linguistique générale), and it’s a conception in which
a group of phenomena, that belongs to different areas, is seen as a structure,
which, besides, the sum of its parts is not equal to the whole (Asensi, p.
113). Structure is synonymous of construction, composition, order and
organization and makes reference to the connexion system that organically binds
the different parts of a organized whole (Petitot, p.991) and it is a system in
which any of its elements cannot be modified without changing all the others
(Lévy Strauss).
It’s
a
theory of literature that focuses on the codes and conventions that underline
all discourse and on the system of language as a functioning totality [...].
Similarly, it is not for criticism to reconstitute the message of a work, [...]
but establishes the formal structure which allows the meaning to be conveyed. Rather than interpreting the meaning or value of a work, the critic
examines the structures that produce meaning (Greig E. Henderson and
Christopher Brown). In literary theory structuralism is an approach to analysing the
narrative material by examining the underlying invariant structure...
Structuralistic literary criticism argues that the "novelty value of a
literary text" can lie only in a new structure, rather than in the
specifics of character development and voice in which that structure is
expressed (WP), which in the case of poetry the linguistic-material context of
the poem makes use of two resources (one is metrics and the other is
figurative) to call readers attention on its own structue of sign (Asensi, p.
128).
Structuralism is about meaning, not just
about form, as Genette says, it is a study of the cultural construction or
identification of meaning according to the relations of signs that constitute
the meaning-spectrum of the culture (John Lye). Literary critics [...] did seek
to understand the rules by which we interpret a piece of writing. Jonathan
Culler remarked [...] that "the real object of poetics is not the work
itself but its intelligibility. One must attempt to explain
how it is that works can be understood; the implicit knowledge, the conventions
that enable readers to make sense of them must be formulated [...]" (C. John Holcombe, 2006). Structuralism ties the
meaning of the work to the meanings of the culture. As Genette suggests that
topics is an area of study that structuralism can bring us to -- the
traditional subjects and forms of the culture [...] can be applied to the study
of literature as a whole, as a meaning system. (John Lye). The operative
concept is intertextuality. "We now know," Barthes writes, "that
the text is not a line of words releasing a single 'theological meaning' (the
'message' of an Author-God) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of
writings, none of them original, blend and clash. The text is a tissue of
quotations drawn from innumerable centers of culture." (Greig E. Henderson and Christopher Brown).
Structuralists also followed Saussure's lead
in believing that sign systems must be understood in terms of binary
oppositions (a proposition later disputed by poststructuralist Jacques Derrida)
(bedfordstmartins.com), as informing structures and as representing the central
concerns and imaginative structures of the society (John Lye, Genette).
On the analysis of the literary work that
would be done there are some approaches to take into consideration such as the
study of the basic codes which make narrative possible and which gives rise to
such things as Barthes division of incidents into nuclei and catalyzers, and
his promulgation of codes of narrative (adapted from Cohen and Shires) which
could be the recognizable actions and their effects, the field where signifiers
point to other signifiers to produce a chain of recognizable connotations, the
code of narrative suspense, the binaries -mentioned above- which the culture
uses/enacts to create its meanings and the reference to various bodies of knowledge
which constitute the society (John Lye, Structuralism).
That is, let’s take for instance, W. B.Yeats
„The Second Coming“ I worked on, which goes as follows:
Turning and turning in the
widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the
falconer;
Things fall apart; The
center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon
the world
It requires certain conventions of reading because to understand the image Yeats uses on the relationship between falcon and falconer both author and readers have to share some common conception, a convention, of the function of that relationship and what it is about, otherwise meaning would not be conveyed; that is, a signifier that points to other signifier, and which it is possible to be understood due to a common, shared cultural view.
Another example could be another poem I worked on entitle „Mariana“ by Alfred Lord Tennyson and which is based on the work „Measure for measure“ by W. Shakespeare. Doing this link Tennyson is already giving clues to the readers on what the poem is about, which just doing so already conveys meaning for the poem to be better understood, as readers who share (the knowledge) of this reference can have the image of an isolated woman (Mariana) who has been abandoned by her lover. But also, this example can also point to the common cultural shared knowledge of a time mentioned above, because people during the Victorian age (when the poem was written and published) shared the same view of the situation of women back then, which otherwise could have not „helped“ in understanding the poem.
And it’s also this poem which can be useful
to exemplify the idea of structure already mentioned and so important for this
view of criticism. „Mariana“ can be seen as a chained structure because every
stanza is linked with a lament Mariana expresses ([...] She said, „I am aweary,
aweary“) and in every link her inner and outside world gradually is portrayed
(herself, her house and her surroundings) and how they all look the same, thus
giving the idea of an structure, as a whole. A meaning construct.
SOURCES:
- „Structuralism“. Wikipedia. 17 May 2006. Wikipedia.org. 24 May 2006. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuralism
- „Cours de Linguistique générale“. Wikipedia. 7 May 2006. Wikipedia.org. 24 May 2006. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cours_de_linguistique_g%C3%A9n%C3%A9rale
- Manuel Asensi Pérez. Historia de la Teoria de la Literatura, (el siglo XX has los años setenta). Página 113 y 128. Tirant lo Banch, Valencia, 2003.
- Jean Petitot. Página 991. (extraido del libro de Manuel Asensi Pérez, donde no figura la referencia bibliográfica)
- Lévy Strauss, Claude (1958) en „La noción de estructura en etnología“ en „Antropología estructural. Barcelona. Paidós. 1ª Ed. 1987. pp. 299-338.
- Greig E. Henderson and Christopher Brown. „Glossary of literary theory“. 31 March 1997. www.library.utoronto.ca. University of Toronto. 24 May 2006. <http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/glossary/Structuralism.html>
- Critical approaches, „Definition of Structuralism“. www.bedfordstmartins.com. 24 May 2006. <http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/virtualit/poetry/critical_define/crit_struct.html>
- C. John Holcombe. “Structuralism: Art as not autonomous”. www.textect.com. LitLangs 2006. 24 May 2006. <http://www.textetc.com/theory/art-as-not-autonomous.html>
- Professor John Lye. “Some Elements of Structuralism and its Application to Literary Theory”. 24 November 1999. www.brocu.ca. Brock University. 24 May 2006. http://www.brocku.ca/english/courses/4F70/struct.html
- Professor John Lye. „Genette summation“. 24 November 1999. www.brocu.ca. Brock University. 24 May 2006. <http://www.brocku.ca/english/courses/4F70/genette.html>