Post Structuralism Analysis

Important Predecessors of Post-structuralism:

I. Formalism: Formalism was a literary school of criticism that influenced Structuralism to a great extent. It was influential mainly in Russia from 1910s to the early 1930s. As its name suggests it asserted the importance of form over content of the work. In this sense, they were anti-Platonic. Because Plato had considered content as more significant and supreme than form to determine a work’s literary quality in his Republic and Laws (1). Thus, it can be argued that the Formalists turned the traditional theory of form and content upside down. In their critical readings of literary texts they prioritized form and neglected the content. The implications of this formalist approach were very radical

For them literature was a special use of language compared to the common or ordinary use of it. The basic purpose of ordinary use of language is to communicate while poetical use of language is self-referential and grabs attention to its own features. The core idea of Formalism is that a literary text is not something like a mirror hold on to reality. This was very new idea that influenced contemporary literary theories like Structuralism and Post-structuralism. These theories also do not consider literature or a literary text as window on the

Therefore, Saussure has been popularly acknowledged as the father figure of Structuralism. Structuralism as an intellectual movement and theory was first explored and applied by anthropologist, Claude Levi-Strauss and literary critic, Roland Barthes in their respective fields of writings. This is was the first most acclaimed method in the history of theory applied to study the world at large. It was used extensively in every human science for analytical purposes in the middle of the twentieth century. In the 1950s and 60s Structuralism had become a very common method to analyze literature, philosophy and culture. As earlier mentioned, the roots of Structuralism are in the thinking of Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913). Saussure was a Swiss linguist who discussed innovative methods of studying a language in his lectures delivered in Geneva from 1907 to 1911. These lectures were actually a part of three different courses on language. Later on, his students collected the notes given at the courses and published in the form of a book titled, Course in General linguistics in 1915.since then this book has been the basis of Structuralism and many modern approaches to literature, philosophy and