Priyal Sarvaiya ( Major - 16 )
# College Name : Maharani Shree Nandkunvarba Mahila Arts And Commerce College.
# NAME :- SARVAIYA PRIYAL
#Course Name :- TYBA
#Sem :- 6
# Subject :- Major:- 16
# Subject Name :-Modern Literary Criticism.
❇️ CLASS ASSIGNMENT ❇️
✴️Explain the main features of Structuralism and discuss what structuralist critics do while analysing a literary text.
Answer:-
📚Structuralism: Main Features and the Role of the Structuralist Critic
Structuralism is a critical approach that emerged in the 20th century, mainly influenced by the linguistic theories of Ferdinand de Saussure. It argues that meaning in language and literature is not produced individually or naturally, but through underlying structures and systems of signs.
(I)Main Features of Structuralism:-
1️⃣ Language as a System of Signs:-
Structuralism is based on Saussure’s idea that language is a system of signs.
Each sign has two parts:
👉Signifier – the sound or written form of a word.
👉Signified – the concept or meaning it represents.
Meaning does not exist independently; it is created through differences between signs. For example, the word “hero” gains meaning because it is different from “villain.”
2️⃣ Emphasis on Structure over Individual Meaning :-
Structuralists focus on the structure underlying a text rather than the author’s intention or the reader’s feelings.
They believe:
👉Literature follows certain universal patterns.
👉Individual works are examples of larger systems.
3️⃣ Binary Oppositions :-
Structuralism highlights binary oppositions, which are pairs of contrasting ideas such as:
👉Good / Evil
👉Light / Dark
👉Male / Female
👉Nature / Culture
These oppositions help organize meaning in a text. Structuralists study how these oppositions function and interact.
4️⃣Focus on Underlying Patterns:-
👉Structuralists try to identify recurring patterns in myths, stories, and genres.
👉For example, Claude Lévi-Strauss studied myths and argued that all myths share common structural patterns.
👉Similarly, Vladimir Propp analyzed Russian folktales and found common character roles and narrative functions.
5️⃣ Text as Part of a Larger System :-
A literary work is not seen as isolated. Instead, it is:
👉Part of a cultural system
👉Connected to other texts
👉Governed by conventions and codes
Meaning comes from these systems rather than from personal expression.
6️⃣ Scientific Approach :-
👉Structuralism attempts to make literary criticism more scientific and objective.
👉It focuses on rules, structures, and systems instead of emotions or moral judgments.
(II) What Structuralist Critics Do While Analysing a Literary Text :-
When analysing a literary text, structuralist critics:
1️⃣Examine the Structure of the Text
They break the text into smaller units such as:-
👉Plot structure
👉Narrative functions
👉Character roles
👉Repeated motifs
They look for patterns and relationships.
2️⃣Identify Binary Oppositions :-
👉They find contrasting elements in the text and analyze how these oppositions create meaning.
👉For example, in a novel, the conflict between civilization and wilderness may structure the entire story.
3️⃣Study Language and Signs:-
Structuralist critics analyze:
👉Symbols
👉Metaphors
👉Codes
👉Cultural signs
They explore how meaning is produced through language rather than assumed as natural.
4️⃣Ignore Author’s Intention :-
Structuralists do not focus on:
👉The writer’s biography
👉Personal emotions
👉Historical background (unless it relates to structure)
They believe meaning lies in the system of language, not in the author’s mind.
5️⃣ Compare with Other Texts :-
They compare the text with:
👉Myths
👉Folktales
👉Other works in the same genre
They try to discover universal narrative structures.
6️⃣ Analyze Narrative Rules :-
Influenced by thinkers like Roland Barthes, structuralists examine:
👉Narrative codes
👉Levels of meaning
How readers interpret signs Barthes emphasized that texts are systems of signs that operate through cultural codes.
📚 Conclusion :-
Structuralism views literature as a structured system of signs governed by rules and patterns. It shifts attention away from the author and focuses instead on:
•Language
•Structure
•Binary oppositions
•Universal narrative patterns.
❇️ HOME ASSIGNMENT ❇️
✴️Explain the origin and development of feminist Criticism. Discuss its major concepts and objectives.
→Answer:
Feminist criticism didn’t just appear out of thin air; it was born from a necessity to challenge a literary world that, for centuries, treated the male perspective as the "universal" human experience. It is both a political and a literary tool used to examine how literature reinforces—or undermines—the economic, political, social, and psychological oppression of women.
1️⃣ Origins and Development :-
The evolution of feminist criticism is often categorized into "waves," each building on the last to broaden the scope of inquiry.
💢The First Wave (Late 19th Century – Early 20th Century)
Initially focused on legal rights (suffrage and property), the literary side of this wave questioned the portrayal of women in the "Great Canon."
👉Virginia Woolf: In A Room of One's Own (1929), she famously argued that a woman must have money and a room of her own to write fiction. She highlighted how social and economic inequalities stifled female genius.
💢The Second Wave (1960s – 1980s) :-
This is where feminist criticism became a formalized academic discipline. It moved beyond "equal rights" to look at deep-seated cultural patriarchy.
👉Simone de Beauvoir: Her work The Second Sex (1949) laid the groundwork by asserting that "one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman," distinguishing biological sex from socially constructed gender.
👉Gynocriticism: Coined by Elaine Showalter, this phase shifted focus from how men write about women to how women write about their own experiences, constructing a female-centric literary history.
💢The Third Wave and Beyond (1990s – Present) :-
Modern feminist criticism is defined by Intersectionality (a term coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw). It recognizes that "woman" is not a monolithic category and examines how gender intersects with race, class, sexuality, and colonialism.
2️⃣ Major Concepts :-
To understand feminist criticism, you have to look through its specific set of analytical lenses:
👉Patriarchy :- The systemic social organization where men hold primary power and predominate in roles of political leadership, moral authority, and control of property.
👉The "Other" :- Derived from de Beauvoir, this concept explains how men are viewed as the "Subject" (the standard) while women are the "Object" (the "Other" who is defined only in relation to the man).
👉The Male Gaze :- Originally a film theory concept by Laura Mulvey, this refers to how visual arts and literature are structured around a masculine viewer, frequently objectifying women.
👉Phallogocentrism :- A term used in post-structuralist feminism to describe how language itself is centered on the male (the phallus) as the source of meaning and logic.
3️⃣Core Objectives :-
Feminist critics generally work toward these four goals:
👉Deconstructing the Canon :- To expose the "misogyny" of literary practice by analyzing how male authors have historically stereotyped or silenced female characters.
👉Rediscovery :- To recover "lost" or neglected works by female authors and ensure they are given the same academic weight as their male counterparts.
👉Analyzing Gender Construction :- To demonstrate that gender is a social construct rather than a biological destiny.
👉Promoting Equality :- Ultimately, the goal is to transform the way we read and write to create a more equitable cultural landscape.
❇️ ESSAY ❇️
📚Feminist criticism and psychoanalysis :
The story so far of feminism's relationship with psychoanalysis is simple in outline but complex in nuance. The story can be said to begin, like so much else, with Kate Millett's Sexual Politics in 1969 which condemns Freud as a prime source of the patriarchal attitudes against which feminists must fight. The influence of this view within feminism is still very strong, but Freud was defended in a series of important books in subsequent years, notably Juliet Mitchell's Psychoanalysis and Feminism in 1974. This book defends Freud against Millett by, in effect, using Millett's own terms and concepts, especially the distinction, so crucial to feminism, between sex and gender, the former being a matter of biology, the latter a construct, something learned or acquired,
rather than 'natural'. This distinction is what Simone de Beauvoir invokes in the famous first sentence in Part Two of The Second Sex (1949) when she writes 'One is not born a woman; rather, one becomes a woman'. The project of de Beauvoir's book is one which Sexual Politics sees itself as continuing. Mitchell's defence of Freud, then, is to argue that Freud doesn't present the feminine as something simply 'given and natural'.
Female sexuality (indeed, heterosexuality
in general) isn't just there 'naturally' from the start, but is formed by early experiences and adjustments, and Freud shows the process of its being produced and constructed, particularly in the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (in volume seven of the Penguin Freud, entitled On Sexuality). It follows that gender roles must be malleable and changeable, not inevitable and unchangeable givens. Thus, the argument runs, the notion of penis envy need not be taken as simply concerning the male physical organ itself (whatever might have been Freud's intentions), but as concerning that organ as an emblem
of social power and the advantages which with it. (I am reminded of an advertisement - which was banned - showing a photograph of a nude woman with the caption 'What women need to succeed in a man's world'.
The woman shown had male sexual organs crudely drawn in over her own.) In the reading discussed in the next section, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar use the idea of 'social castration', which amounts to the same thing, for this term signifies women's lack of social power, this lack being represented, by means of the word
'castration', as a male possession, though not as in any sense a male attribute.
Jane Gallop's 1982 book Feminism and Psychoanalysis continues the rehabiliation of psychoanalysis, but by switching from the Freudian to the Lacanian variety, partly on the grounds that what is often implicit in Freud is explicit in Lacan's system, namely that the phallus is not the physical biological object but a symbol of the power which goes with it. While men, of course, come out of Lacan's writings better advantaged than women, none the less Lacan shows men too as powerless, since the fullness of signification, which the
phallus also represents in Lacan's work, is not attainable by either men or women. Also, Lacan's way of writing - notoriously abstruse, playful, punning,and 'paralogical' (meaning beyond or above logic) seems to embody the 'feminine' or 'semiotic' aspect of language, rather than the 'masculine' or 'symbolic' aspect. Another significant name in the rehabilitation of Freud is the British critic Jacqueline Rose whose book The Haunting of Sylvia Plath is an example of an applied feminist-psychoanalytic approach. Rose's project is to combine the insights of feminism, psychoanalysis and politics. She is joint editor, with Juliet Mitchell, of Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the ecole freu-dienne (1982). The argument in favour of Lacan, and of Freud, is, again, that it shows sexual identity to be a 'cultural construct', gives a detailed series of 'insider' accounts of how the construction takes place, and shows examples of this conditioning being resisted. The resulting position is (as Isobel Armstrong remarks in a article about Rose in The Times Higher Education Supplement 16 July 1993, p. 15) a very complicated one. In general the defence of Freud and Lacan has been more favourably received by French and British feminists than by Americans (another interesting transgression of the usual Anglo-American versus French dichotomy).Elaine Showalter, for instance, in her essay about Ophelia (reprinted in Newton's Theory into Practice - see under General Readers in the Further reading section) is dismissive of Lacan's evident disregard of Ophelia - he promises to discuss her in his seminar on Hamlet, but somehow never gets round to it.