STRUCTURALISM

Structuralists believe that things cannot be understood in isolation - they have to be seen in the context of the larger structures they are part of. Thus to understand a work of literature you have to situate it in the larger context of its genre, its theme, etc. These structures are imposed by our way of perceiving the world rather than objective entities already existing in the external world. Structuralism is not a set of …

…Claude Lévi-Strauss used language-data to verify social rules, thus he was interested in mythology as the richest source of symbols, seeing myths as the way the savage mind (the untamed mind within all of us) gives order to the world. Jonathan Culler: Structuralism shouldn't search for new interpretations of texts but rather investigate how interpretation takes place. He states that structuralism should analyze the literary langue rather than investigate the parole.