CHAVDA KHUSHI

CHAVDA KHUSHI 

TYBA SEM6

MAJOR 16

MODERN LITERARY CRITICISM

                • HOME ASSIGNMENT •

Explain the main features of Structuralism and discuss what structuralist critics do while analysing a literary text.

→Answer:

Introduction

Structuralism is a literary and cultural theory that studies literature as a system of signs. It developed in the 20th century and was influenced by modern linguistics, especially the ideas of Ferdinand de Saussure. Structuralists believe that meaning does not come from individual words or texts alone, but from the larger system or structure in which they exist.

Instead of focusing on the author’s intention or moral message, structuralism studies patterns, structures, and codes that operate within a text.

Origin and Background

Structuralism began in linguistics. Saussure explained that language is a system of signs made up of:

•Signifier (sound or word)

•Signified (concept or meaning)

He also introduced the idea of langue (the system of language) and parole (individual speech). Structuralists applied this model to literature and culture.

The French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss used structuralism to study myths. He believed that myths from different cultures follow similar structures based on binary oppositions such as:

Good / Evil

Nature / Culture

Male / Female

Life / Death

Later, critics applied these ideas to literature.

What Structuralist Critics Do

Structuralist critics do not focus mainly on emotions or moral lessons. Instead, they analyse the structure of the text. According to structuralist principles, critics:

1. Relate the Text to Larger Structures

They connect the text to:

Literary genres (e.g., tragedy, comedy)

Intertextual connections

Universal narrative structures

Repeated patterns and motifs

For example, a novel may follow the structure of a “hero’s journey.”

2. Study Underlying Narrative Patterns

Structuralists believe that stories follow certain universal patterns. They look for:

•Repeated symbols

•Recurring themes

•Basic oppositions

For example, in many stories we find oppositions like town vs countryside, art vs life, appearance vs reality.

3. Apply Linguistic Models to Literature

Structuralists treat literature like language. Just as language has grammar, literature has narrative structures.

Roland Barthes was one of the most important structuralist critics. In his book S/Z (1970), he analysed a short story by dividing it into small units called “lexies” and identifying different codes that create meaning.

4. Study Culture as a System of Signs

Structuralism is not limited to literature. It studies culture as a system of signs.

For example:

•Fashion

•Advertisements

•Sports

•Rituals

Barthes, in his book Mythologies (1957), analysed everyday cultural items like wrestling, boxing, and advertisements to show how they carry hidden meanings.

Important Concepts in Structuralism

Binary Oppositions

Structuralists believe that human thinking is based on opposites such as:

•Light / Dark

•Male / Female

•Good / Evil

These oppositions help organise meaning.

Signifying System

A signifying system is any organised set of signs that produce meaning. Literature, fashion, and even food habits can be studied as sign systems.

Conclusion

Structuralism changed literary studies by shifting attention from the author and moral message to structure and systems. It treats literature as part of a larger cultural network. By analysing patterns, oppositions, and codes, structuralists try to uncover the hidden structure that produces meaning.

Structuralism has greatly influenced modern literary theory and prepared the ground for post-structuralism.

                • CLASS ASSIGNMENT •

Explain the origin and development of feminist Criticism. Discuss its major concepts and objectives.

→Answer:

⁠Introduction

Feminist criticism is one of the most important modern literary theories. It developed as a response to the inequality faced by women in society and literature. Though it became a strong academic movement in the 1960s, its roots go back to earlier writers and thinkers who demanded equal rights for women.

Writers like Mary Wollstonecraft in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), John Stuart Mill in The Subjection of Women (1869), and Virginia Woolf in A Room of One’s Own (1929) questioned women’s secondary position in society. Later, Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949) gave a strong philosophical foundation to modern feminism.

Thus, feminist criticism developed from the women’s movement and aimed to challenge male dominance in literature and culture.

Origin and Historical Development

Feminist criticism gained strength during the “second-wave feminism” of the 1960s. During this time, women began questioning:

•Why most famous writers were men

•Why female characters were shown as weak or dependent

•Why women writers were ignored in literary history

In America, critics like Kate Millett (in Sexual Politics) and Elaine Showalter played an important role. Showalter introduced the term gynocriticism, which means studying literature written by women from a female perspective.

In France, theorists like Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, and Julia Kristeva connected feminism with psychoanalysis and language theory.

Thus, feminist criticism developed in different directions in America, England, and France.

Major Concepts of Feminist Criticism

1. Patriarchy

The most basic concept is patriarchy — a system in which men dominate society. Feminist critics believe that Western civilization is male-centered. Women are shown as “Other” or secondary to men.

According to Simone de Beauvoir, “One is not born, but becomes a woman.” This means society teaches women how to behave in a limited way.

2. Sex and Gender

Feminists make a distinction between:

Sex – biological difference

Gender – socially constructed roles

Gender roles like “men are strong” and “women are emotional” are created by society, not nature.

Later, Judith Butler argued that gender is performative — meaning we act according to social expectations repeatedly, and that creates gender identity.

3. Representation of Women in Literature

Feminist critics examine how women are portrayed in literature. Often, women are shown in two extreme forms:

The angel (pure, obedient, ideal woman)

The monster or witch (evil, destructive woman)

In many traditional novels, women exist only as wives, mothers, or lovers of male heroes. Their identity depends on men.

4. Gynocriticism

Elaine Showalter introduced gynocriticism, which focuses on:

History of women writers

Female themes and experiences

Female literary tradition

Psychological experiences of women

Books like The Madwoman in the Attic by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar explore how women writers expressed their anger and frustration through literature.

5. Feminist Language Theory

Some French feminists argued that language itself is male-dominated (phallocentric).

Hélène Cixous proposed the idea of écriture féminine (feminine writing), which breaks traditional rules and expresses women’s emotions freely.

Julia Kristeva introduced the ideas of the symbolic (ordered, male language) and the semiotic (emotional, fluid language connected with the mother).

Feminist criticism is not just a literary theory; it is also a social and political movement. It challenges male dominance and gives importance to women’s voices. From early thinkers like Mary Wollstonecraft to modern theorists like Judith Butler, feminist criticism has grown into a powerful and influential field.

It has changed the way we read literature by making us aware of gender bias and hidden power structures. Today, feminist criticism continues to expand and influence literary studies across the world.

  

                             • 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.