Between the Lines

Structuralism is not solely a literary term, it is a methodology that is concerned with language and specifically signs and signification. Structuralists attempt to uncover the structures and patterns that underlie all cultural phenomena. Structuralism is not only applicable to literature, it is applicable to everything humans do from media to fashion. Structuralism can be a deeply complex cultural theory, and as my knowledge of linguistics is minimal, I will refrain from going into the finer details of this theory and focus this blog on its relevance to literature. Ferdinand de Sausseure Structuralist theory emerged out of the work of Ferdinand de Sausseure in the 20th Century. He established the notion of language as a sign system of unchanging patterns and rules. Following his death, his notes and lectures on structural linguistics were compiled and published in the work,  A Course in General Linguistics . The work was highly influential and marks the starting point of st...

Boris Eikenbaum Russian Formalism and New Criticism very much go hand in hand under the umbrella term of formalism. They share similar qualities in that the focus of their study is on the text itself and dismisses the importance of the author. This school of literary theory came out of the will to reform outdated approaches to literature, in Russia, in the early part of the 1900s. It was Boris Eikenbaum who set about recording the principles of this school of theory in his text Theory of the Formal Method. As with  New Criticism, close reading is the key tool for the Russian Formalists with a heavy focus on language, syntax, grammatical construction and the sounds of words. It is the job of formalist critics to consider how these elements function and contribute to the form of the poem. Remember that the form is not what the poem is saying, but how it is saying it. What the poem is about is of no interest to formalists. The very basis of Russian Formalist theory is cente...

In my final year of university,  sat at my desk, surrounded by empty energy drink cans, head collapsed upon my annotated copy of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, I would often drift away and contemplate what it would be like to meet the man. Choosing to write my dissertation on Eliot's poetry was a rather straight forward decision for me. His poems were complex, but they were compelling. I very much thrived on the challenge of deciphering his poems, but he also spoke of a disillusionment with modernity that, despite coming from a different cultural viewpoint, still spoke to me. Eliot to me is a genius; an artist. He is a literary behemoth who not only contributed enormously to poetry, but to the field of literary studies as a whole. Eliot, as a poet, I adore, but Eliot, the man, is a different proposition. Here I am an atheist, socialist and progressive thinker in admiration at the work of a man who was deeply religious, conservative and a bigot. It is a difficult conflict to res...