Literary Theory & Criticism Paper-7

Topic

Gerard Genette’s Structuralist criticism.

Paper 7 Literary Theory & Criticism

Name Devendra A Joshi

Class M.A. Sem-2

Submitted To Prof. Dilip Barad (Head of English Dept. M. K. S. Bhavnagar University)

Gerard Genette’s Structuralist criticism.

    Structuralism is a theory focused upon the Structure of human expression. It is a complex intellectual movement that first established its importance in France in the 1950 and 1960 and was by no means confined to the study of literary work.

   Structuralism as a method is peculiarly imitable to literary criticism which is a discourse upon a discourse. Literary criticism in that it is meta – linguistic in character and comes into being / existence as meta- literature. In his words “it can therefore be meta- literature that is to say, ‘a literature of which literature is the imposed object.

   The activity or work was generated by humans, and could be decoded. “Structuralism” “structure” concreteness. “Structuralism” phenomena e. g. building physical in essence. Structures in structuralism are mental models built after concrete reality structures are not concrete manifestations of reality; but cognitive models of reality. Structures not obvious demand an understanding of hidden. Deep aspects not based on concrete or physical phenomena as they are in biological or the sciences, structures and their structuralist models exits only in human minds and not in nature.

       As an analytical model, structuralism assumes the universality of human thought processes in efforts to explain the “deep structure” or underlying meaning existing in cultural phenomena.

       Structuralist literary criticism argues that the “novelty values of a literary text”, can lie only in new structure rather than in the specifics of character development and voice in which structure is expressed.

       Gerard genette used the theory of structuralism in his easy “structuralism and literary criticism”. One discipline could be satisfactorily applied to the study of other discipline as well. This is what he calls “intellectual bricolage”. It is a name given to Saussure’s approach to language as a system of philosophy. Literary criticism is that it is “meta-linguistic” in character and comes into being or existence as met literature.  

       Genette defines structuralism as a method based on the study of the structures, wherever they occur. He adds “but to begin with structures are not diretly uncounted objects far from it.

       Structuralism would appear to be a refugee for all immanent criticism against the danger of fragmentation that threatens thematic analysis. Genette believes that structuralism untainted by any of the transcendent reduction of psychoanalysis.

       Genette believes that structural criticism is untained by any of the transcendent reductions of psychoanalysis or Marxist explanation. He further writes, “it exerts, in its own way, a sort of internal reduction traversing the substance of the work in order to reach its bone structure certainly not a superficial examination, but a sort of radioscopic penetration, and all the more external in that it is more penetrating.

       Thus to conclude we may say, the structuralist idea is to follow literature in its overall evolution while making sychroniccuts at various stages and comparing the tables one with another. Literary evolution then appears in all its richness which derives from the fact that the system survives while constantly altering.