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 This school of literary theory came out of the will to reform outdated approaches to literature, in Russia, in the early part of the 1900s.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...

"I have Jane Austen's diary at the time of writing Sense and Sensibility!" New Critic: "Not interested." "I have William Thackeray's annotated manuscript of Vanity Fair!" NC: "Am I bothered though?" "I have a time machine in which I can travel back to the early 1600s and ask Shakespeare about Hamlet!" NC: "Talk to the hand." This is how one can imagine a conversation with a New Critic may take place. Prior to the 20th century, literary analysis was was very much centered in a romanticist tradition which had its focus on the artist. It wanted to appreciate the intellect and the creative genius of the person who produced the text. After the turn of the century, there was a strong reaction against these old forms, that wanted to put the text back at the forefront of analysis. This movement was known as formalism, and its aim was to remove a text from the historical context of its production, and appreciate it for t...

Does a text have an author? At face value this may seem an absurd question. Surely the author of a text is the person who wrote it? That may seem a perfectly sensible answer, but it is one deeply problematic to literary theory.  If a text has an author then they are the authority over said text and preside over its meaning. The task of textual analysis becomes the process of deciphering the author's intention, and the author's intention is the definitive meaning.  Taking our lead from the skeptical thinkers in my last blog , we know we can undermine the author's authority by claiming that the writer is unaware of their own thought process. We can claim there are sociological, psychological, and historical factors that influence the texts meaning. The author's choice of language may give insights into the unconscious, the ideologies of society, or several other influences that the writer is unaware of at the time of writing. Furthermore, to give the writer a...

I am very happy to have been offered the opportunity to study a masters in English Literary Studies at the University of Exeter. During the course, I will be specialising in an area that has always engaged me during my undergraduate degree; that of literary theory and criticism. Literary theory can be a daunting world of abstract thoughts and philosophies; so I thought I would begin a series of blogs in which I will break down this broad area of literary studies into easily digestible guides. In these guides I intend to provide an overview of the paradigms and debates that make up literary theory; providing the reader with a good basic introduction, and myself the opportunity to consolidate my own knowledge. Literary theory is a difficult term to pin down. It is a term that incorporates elements of cultural, philosophical and sociological studies, and is made of numerous different approaches, many of which will feature in future blogs. Essentially literary theory is the study o...