(from Penguin's Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory)
Russian Formalism:
The Russian Formalists were primarily interested in the way that literary texts achieve their effects and in establishing a scientific basis for the study of literature. In their early work, human content in literature (e.g. emotions, ideas, actions, 'reality' in general) did not possess, for them, any significance in defining what was specifically 'literary' about a text. Indeed, the formalists collapse the distinction between form and content. And they regard the writer as a kind of cipher merely reworking available literary devices and conventions. The writer is of negligible importance. All the emphasis is on the 'literariness' of the formal devices of a text. OPOJAZ went so far as to suggest that there are no poets or literary figures: there is just poetry and literature. Viktor Shklovsky summarizes the attitude in his definition of literature as 'the sum total of all the stylistic devices employed in it'.
The early phases of formalism were dominated by Shklovsky's ideas, which were partly influenced by the Futurists. One of his important contributions was the concept of Ostranenie or 'making strange', later to be called 'defamiliarization'.
The formalists also developed a theory of narrative, making a distinction between plot and story. Syuzhet ('the plot') refers to the order and manner in which events are actually presented in the narrative, while fabula ('the story') refers to the chronological sequence of events.
Boris Tomashevsky, another of the formalists used the term 'motif' to denote the smallest unit of plot and distinguished between 'bound' and 'free' motifs. The 'bound' motif is one which the story absolutely requires, while the 'free' is inessential.
The concept of 'motif' is clearly linked to 'motive' and thus to 'motivation'. Shklovsky defined the motivation of a text as the extent to which it was dependent on 'non literary' assumptions, and he cited Sterne's Tristram Shandy as an example of a work totally without motivation.
In later development of Formalist theory the concept of 'device' gave way to the concept of 'function's a work of literature, depending on the purpose or mode or genre. It was no longer the device per se which was defamiliarizing but its function in the work. One of the key works in the evolution of the theories of 'function' and 'structure' is the Jakobson-Tynayanov Theses (1929). As important is the Tynayanov and Jakobson's essay Problem in the Study of Literature and Language (1927). The Prague School was to unite Russian Formalism and Saussurean linguistics and via Jakobson was to contribute to structuralism.
New criticism: A term which refers to a kind of 'movement' in literary criticism which developed in the 1920s (for the most part among Americans). However, it was until 1941 that John Crowe Ransom published a book called The New Criticism.
The New Critics advocated 'close reading' and detailed textual analysis of poetry rather than an interest in the mind and personality of the poet , sources, the history of ideas and political and social implications. The application of semantics to this criticism was also important.
The latest 'new' criticism is, of course, to be found in structuralism and deconstruction. However, the traditional methods of criticism and analysis, as in practical criticism, are still widely employed; not least because structuralist and deconstructive practice tends to be inaccessible to many, and even very abstruse.
Structuralism: A movement of thought in the human sciences, widespread in Europe, which has affected a number of fields of knowledge and inquiry - especially philosophy, anthropology, history, sociology and literary criticism. It has led to fundamental reconsideration of mankind's and womankind's position, behaviour, function and attitude historically - and now.
Broadly speaking it is concerned with 'language' in a most general sense: not just the language of utterance in speech and writing. It is concerned with signs and thus with signification. Structuralist theory considers all conventions and codes of communication; for example, all forms of signal (smoke, fire, traffic lights, Morse, flags, gesture), body language, clothes artefacts, status symbols and so on. In theory, at any rate, it is to do with any or all of the means by which human beings convey information to each other: from a railway timetable to a thumbs-up sign; from PR brochure to a siren.
Everything, then, in the theory of structuralism, is the product of a system of signification or code. The relationships between the elements of the code give it signification. Codes are arbitrary (all signs are arbitrary) and without them we cannot apprehend reality.
As far as literature and literary criticism are concerned, structuralism challenges the long-standing belief that a work of literature (or any kind of literary text) reflects a given reality; a literary text is, rather, constituted of other conventions and texts.
Claude Lévi-Strauss developed a structural theory in consideration of myth, ritual and kinship, especially in his classic work Anthropologie structurale (1958), and in his earlier Elementary Structures of Kinship (1949). He sees social structure as a kind of model and is at pains to show that the behaviour patterns of kinship and the existence of institutions depend on methods of communication that are all characteristic of how the human mind works. Thus, he analyses modes of thought as well as modes of action, looking for the system of differences which underlie practice, rather than their origins and causes. His theories about myths had considerable influence in the development of the theory of narratology, a further aspect of structuralism.
Post-structuralism:
Late in the 1960s, structuralism became subject to rigorous and lasting critique of its thinking and methods. post-structuralism is a more rigorous working out of the possibilities, implications and shortcomings of structuralism and its basis in Saussurean linguistics itself. In a sense it complements structuralism by offering alternative modes of inquiry, explanation and interpretation.
Post-structuralism doubts the adequacy of structuralism and, as far as literature is concerned, tends to reveal that the meaning of any text is, of its nature, unstable. It reveals that signification is, of its nature, unstable.
Saussure's fundamental distinction between signifier and signified is at the heart of the instability. Without realizing it, Saussure, in making the distinction, exposed not coherence between signs, but an inherent incoherence. Post-structuralism pursues further the Saussurean perception that in language there are only differences without positive terms and shows that the signifier and signified are, as it were, not only oppositional but plural, pulling against each other, and, by so doing, creating numerous deferments of meaning, apparently endless criss-crossing patterns and sequences of meaning. In short, what are called 'dissemination'.
In post-structuralist theory Roland Barthes is of particular importance because he bridges the structuralist and post-structuralist movements. In his book Elements of Semiology (1967) he proposed that structuralism is capable of an explanation of any sign system of any culture (i.e. all systems of significations). But he also perceives that such an explanation necessitates a theory of meaning / explanation. This gives rise to the idea of a 'metalanguage'; that is to say, a 'beyond' language or 'second-order language' which is used to describe/ explain/ interpret a 'first-order' language. Given one metalanguage for one explanation, it follows that there may be another in turn, and a metalanguage may replace a 'first-order' language. Each order of language implicitly relies on a metalanguage by which it is explained, and ironically, therefore, deconstruction is placed precariously in the position of becoming (against its principles and design) a metalanguage itself. Thus, discourse upon discourse in regression; and all discourses are exposed to interrogation. This is one aspect of Barthes's post-structuralist thinking and is, fundamentally, deconstructive.
Deconstruction:
The term denotes a particular kind of practice in reading and, thereby, a method of criticism and mode of analytical inquiry. In her book The critical difference (1981) Barbara Johnson clarifies the term:
Russian Formalism:
The Russian Formalists were primarily interested in the way that literary texts achieve their effects and in establishing a scientific basis for the study of literature. In their early work, human content in literature (e.g. emotions, ideas, actions, 'reality' in general) did not possess, for them, any significance in defining what was specifically 'literary' about a text. Indeed, the formalists collapse the distinction between form and content. And they regard the writer as a kind of cipher merely reworking available literary devices and conventions. The writer is of negligible importance. All the emphasis is on the 'literariness' of the formal devices of a text. OPOJAZ went so far as to suggest that there are no poets or literary figures: there is just poetry and literature. Viktor Shklovsky summarizes the attitude in his definition of literature as 'the sum total of all the stylistic devices employed in it'.
The early phases of formalism were dominated by Shklovsky's ideas, which were partly influenced by the Futurists. One of his important contributions was the concept of Ostranenie or 'making strange', later to be called 'defamiliarization'.
The formalists also developed a theory of narrative, making a distinction between plot and story. Syuzhet ('the plot') refers to the order and manner in which events are actually presented in the narrative, while fabula ('the story') refers to the chronological sequence of events.
Boris Tomashevsky, another of the formalists used the term 'motif' to denote the smallest unit of plot and distinguished between 'bound' and 'free' motifs. The 'bound' motif is one which the story absolutely requires, while the 'free' is inessential.
The concept of 'motif' is clearly linked to 'motive' and thus to 'motivation'. Shklovsky defined the motivation of a text as the extent to which it was dependent on 'non literary' assumptions, and he cited Sterne's Tristram Shandy as an example of a work totally without motivation.
In later development of Formalist theory the concept of 'device' gave way to the concept of 'function's a work of literature, depending on the purpose or mode or genre. It was no longer the device per se which was defamiliarizing but its function in the work. One of the key works in the evolution of the theories of 'function' and 'structure' is the Jakobson-Tynayanov Theses (1929). As important is the Tynayanov and Jakobson's essay Problem in the Study of Literature and Language (1927). The Prague School was to unite Russian Formalism and Saussurean linguistics and via Jakobson was to contribute to structuralism.
New criticism: A term which refers to a kind of 'movement' in literary criticism which developed in the 1920s (for the most part among Americans). However, it was until 1941 that John Crowe Ransom published a book called The New Criticism.
The New Critics advocated 'close reading' and detailed textual analysis of poetry rather than an interest in the mind and personality of the poet , sources, the history of ideas and political and social implications. The application of semantics to this criticism was also important.
The latest 'new' criticism is, of course, to be found in structuralism and deconstruction. However, the traditional methods of criticism and analysis, as in practical criticism, are still widely employed; not least because structuralist and deconstructive practice tends to be inaccessible to many, and even very abstruse.
Structuralism: A movement of thought in the human sciences, widespread in Europe, which has affected a number of fields of knowledge and inquiry - especially philosophy, anthropology, history, sociology and literary criticism. It has led to fundamental reconsideration of mankind's and womankind's position, behaviour, function and attitude historically - and now.
Broadly speaking it is concerned with 'language' in a most general sense: not just the language of utterance in speech and writing. It is concerned with signs and thus with signification. Structuralist theory considers all conventions and codes of communication; for example, all forms of signal (smoke, fire, traffic lights, Morse, flags, gesture), body language, clothes artefacts, status symbols and so on. In theory, at any rate, it is to do with any or all of the means by which human beings convey information to each other: from a railway timetable to a thumbs-up sign; from PR brochure to a siren.
Everything, then, in the theory of structuralism, is the product of a system of signification or code. The relationships between the elements of the code give it signification. Codes are arbitrary (all signs are arbitrary) and without them we cannot apprehend reality.
As far as literature and literary criticism are concerned, structuralism challenges the long-standing belief that a work of literature (or any kind of literary text) reflects a given reality; a literary text is, rather, constituted of other conventions and texts.
Claude Lévi-Strauss developed a structural theory in consideration of myth, ritual and kinship, especially in his classic work Anthropologie structurale (1958), and in his earlier Elementary Structures of Kinship (1949). He sees social structure as a kind of model and is at pains to show that the behaviour patterns of kinship and the existence of institutions depend on methods of communication that are all characteristic of how the human mind works. Thus, he analyses modes of thought as well as modes of action, looking for the system of differences which underlie practice, rather than their origins and causes. His theories about myths had considerable influence in the development of the theory of narratology, a further aspect of structuralism.
Post-structuralism:
Late in the 1960s, structuralism became subject to rigorous and lasting critique of its thinking and methods. post-structuralism is a more rigorous working out of the possibilities, implications and shortcomings of structuralism and its basis in Saussurean linguistics itself. In a sense it complements structuralism by offering alternative modes of inquiry, explanation and interpretation.
Post-structuralism doubts the adequacy of structuralism and, as far as literature is concerned, tends to reveal that the meaning of any text is, of its nature, unstable. It reveals that signification is, of its nature, unstable.
Saussure's fundamental distinction between signifier and signified is at the heart of the instability. Without realizing it, Saussure, in making the distinction, exposed not coherence between signs, but an inherent incoherence. Post-structuralism pursues further the Saussurean perception that in language there are only differences without positive terms and shows that the signifier and signified are, as it were, not only oppositional but plural, pulling against each other, and, by so doing, creating numerous deferments of meaning, apparently endless criss-crossing patterns and sequences of meaning. In short, what are called 'dissemination'.
In post-structuralist theory Roland Barthes is of particular importance because he bridges the structuralist and post-structuralist movements. In his book Elements of Semiology (1967) he proposed that structuralism is capable of an explanation of any sign system of any culture (i.e. all systems of significations). But he also perceives that such an explanation necessitates a theory of meaning / explanation. This gives rise to the idea of a 'metalanguage'; that is to say, a 'beyond' language or 'second-order language' which is used to describe/ explain/ interpret a 'first-order' language. Given one metalanguage for one explanation, it follows that there may be another in turn, and a metalanguage may replace a 'first-order' language. Each order of language implicitly relies on a metalanguage by which it is explained, and ironically, therefore, deconstruction is placed precariously in the position of becoming (against its principles and design) a metalanguage itself. Thus, discourse upon discourse in regression; and all discourses are exposed to interrogation. This is one aspect of Barthes's post-structuralist thinking and is, fundamentally, deconstructive.
Deconstruction:
The term denotes a particular kind of practice in reading and, thereby, a method of criticism and mode of analytical inquiry. In her book The critical difference (1981) Barbara Johnson clarifies the term:
Deconstruction is not synonymous with 'destruction', however. It is in fact much closer to the original meaning of the word 'analysis' itself, which etymologically means 'to undo' - a virtual synonym for 'to de-construct'. The deconstruction of a text does not proceed by random doubt or arbitrary subversion, but by the careful teasing out of warring forces of signification within the text itself. If anything is destroyed in a deconstructive reading, it is not the text but the claim to unequivocal domination of one mode of signifying over another. A deconstructive reading is a reading which analyses the specificity of a text's critical difference from itself.Derrida suggests that the language of any discourse is at variance with itself and, by so being, is capable of being read as yet another language. Thus, hypothetically, one may envisage an endless regression of dialectical interpretations and readings without any stable, essential meaning. In short, a text may possess so many different meanings that it cannot have A MEANING. There is no guaranteed essential meaning. An immediate deconstructive practice would be to question the foregoing sentence by asking what is meant by 'guaranteed', 'essential' and 'meaning' in rear context.
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