Structuralism
An approach of Literary Criticism which was
developed from the concepts and methods of structural linguistics and
structural anthropology that analyzes language and literature as
structures. Structuralist critics are primarily interested not in what
makes a text unique but what it has in common with other texts.
People of the Movement
Vladimir Propp -- reduced the large number of
individual characters in Russian folktales to a much smaller number of
what he called "character functions": Hero, Villain, helper and so on.
He was thus able to conclude that the story element in any of these
folktales could be summed up as a sequence of these character
functions.
Louis Althusser
Roland Barthes
Ferdinand de Saussure
Michel Foucault
Jaques Lacan
Claude Levi-Strauss
Jonathan Culler
Related Movements
Modern Structuralists are influenced by Semiology.
Post-Structuralism,
a movement beginning in the 1960's came about as a reaction
to the structuralist movement.
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