Stucturalism

"It is literature written to explain literature and language used in it to explain the role of language in literature"

As someone remarks, criticism is a part of literature which is interpret the text and explain us the role of symbols and language which is used in. 

Nowadays people know more about Deconstruction and post structuralism rather than Structuralism.  So it is necessary to know more about structuralism. Here is my blog as a task given by Prof. Dilip Barad. Head of English department, Bhavnagar.  So let's first know that what is structuralism….

What is Structuralism...

Saussure is considered as a father of structuralism. Structuralism is an approach which can be applied in many fields like in..

Anthropology 

Sociology 

Linguists 

It is a method that indicates elements of human culture must be understood by way of their relationship to a broader, overarching system or structure (Wikipedia). But in literary theory the method is quite different. It interprets the  narrative of literary text and examining the underlying structure. There are many structuralists for example…

Gerard Genette 

Roland Barthes

Claude Levi - Strauss

Here we are considering with Gerard Genette and his essay Structuralism and literary criticism.  But what all structuralist critics find in literary is the same structure of the story. The rising action, climax and falling action. Every story has the same narrative style. And structuralist critics concern with new structures. Here are some examples of Bollywood movies which have the same structure…

Ek Duje ke liye

Qayamat se qayamat 

Ishaqzaade

Ram leela

So these are several hindi Bollywood movies which has the same structure of stories.  A boy and a girl fall in love. Then their family don't expect them. They facing many problems and at the end of the story they dies. The same story as Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. As well as same Story like Heer and Ranjhaa. Thus we find nothing new and real in this Bollywood movies.

Another example is the movie War. It has a different type of narrative style. 

The movie began with suspense and middle from the story...

From the middle of the story continued and then narrator starts narrating from the beginning of the movie…

Thus, the second event is come first then the first event and then the last event of the story.  The story is same, a hero and villain and their revenge. But the narrative style is different. 

Sign, Signifier and signified…

In this method we find sign then that's meaning and then what actually the sign indicates and what we get from that sign. We can take example of a bird Pigeon..

        

This is a sign 

signifier is that it  is a bird, a pigeon

Signified is that it is a symbol of love and peace 

Here we have an image which help us to understand the sign, Signifiers and Signified...

Langage, langue and Parole

Ferdinand de saussure breaking down the study of language into parts and distinguishing between Langage, Langue and Parole. 

Harris, remarks in his preface to study of Saussure and Wittigenstein….

“Language is no longer regarded as peripheral to our grasp of the world … [Words] are collective products of social interaction, essential instruments to articulate the world.”

Language is being a products of social interaction. And that's why Saussure wanted to break the tradition way of looking language. Langue and parole are the French words and Saussure redefined these words. Langue which is language as a system and parole which is language in use.

Applying Structuralism

Here I'm taking an example of a hindi poem by Ramdhari Sinh 'Dinkar' to apply the theory of structuralism….

 

आग की भीख

धुँधली हुई दिशाएँ, छाने लगा कुहासा,

कुचली हुई शिखा से आने लगा धुआँसा।

कोई मुझे बता दे, क्या आज हो रहा है,

मुंह को छिपा तिमिर में क्यों तेज सो रहा है?

दाता पुकार मेरी, संदीप्ति को जिला दे,

बुझती हुई शिखा को संजीवनी पिला दे।

प्यारे स्वदेश के हित अँगार माँगता हूँ।

चढ़ती जवानियों का श्रृंगार मांगता हूँ।

बेचैन हैं हवाएँ, सब ओर बेकली है,

कोई नहीं बताता, किश्ती किधर चली है?

मँझदार है, भँवर है या पास है किनारा?

यह नाश आ रहा है या सौभाग्य का सितारा?

आकाश पर अनल से लिख दे अदृष्ट मेरा,

भगवान, इस तरी को भरमा न दे अँधेरा।

तमवेधिनी किरण का संधान माँगता हूँ।

ध्रुव की कठिन घड़ी में, पहचान माँगता हूँ।

(Click here to read the Poem.)

Sign, Signifiers and Signified in the poem…

The  title of the poem  is 'Aag ki bhikh'. Here the sign is आग 'Fire' which Signified the image of fire, something which is burning…

          

But here what it is Signified or indicates is quite different. Here the fire Signified the spirit, impulse, fury, aggravation of young people or youth. And the other word is 'ભીખ' begging. It signifies to request or ask (someone) earnestly or humbly for something. And here also it is Signified to request the youth of India. 

Langage, langue and Parole….

In many literary work we a layman always find difficulties to understand the language.   He knows that language though he finds difficulties because the language which the writer uses is not the universal language.  It means that language is not everyday life's language which people use normally. As we above discussed langue is a systematic language and parole is the language which we use in our everyday life. Here in this poem readers can find difficulties to understand.  Some words are difficult to understand, as an example…

धुंधली हुई दिशाए, छाने लगा कुहासा,

कुचली हुई शिखा से आने लगा धुआँ सा…

The language is a little difficult. The word like कुहासा, तमवेधिनी, अदृष्ट are not used in everyday life.

आगे पहाड़ को पा धारा रुकी हुई है, 

बल-पुँज केसरी की ग्रीवा झुकी हुई है, 

अग्निस्फुलिंग रज का, बुझ ढेर हो रहा है, 

है रो रही जवानी, अन्धेर हो रहा है।

These lines are also complicated.  Out of our parole. These words are not used in everyday life. The poem seems little bit hard to understand.

As we know that traditional criticism regards criticism as a message without code and Russian Formalism regards literature as code without message. But structuralist critics do possible both the things.  Structural analysis uncovers the hidden layers. In this hindi poem 'आग की भीख' the poet is not begging for fire. But as the fire is dangerous and in a metaphorical way the fire is Signified as courage, aggravation of people and spirit. It was the time when Britishers ruled over us. Perhaps the poet addresses the poem to youngsters of India. He tries to say that where is the spirit of Indians. 

"मुह को छिपा तिमिर में क्यो तेज रो रहा है…."

Here light and darkness indicate the ruling and slavery in India. Further the poet says that we don't know where we are going and nobody has answer to this..

कोई नहीं बताता, किश्ती किधर चली है?

किश्ती it means a boat, but poet tries to say that where  life is going nobody answered. 

है रो रही जवानी, अन्धेर हो रहा है।

Overall the poet wants to say that young people are sleeping and doing nothing. And that's why he used to say that  youthfulness is crying. Thus he wanted to awaken the youth in India by the poem. 

Thus as a structuralist critic we have to interpret the text. The structure of the literary genre and it is universal or not.

An example of an advertisement:

In the above video the first advertisement is very confusing. It is not convincing to buy the product. When we watch this advertisement we interpret that this is about the truck. It also shows that how smoothly the truck is running on rough roads. And also we find one couple. And the song is a love song. But the advertisement is about Fevicol. There is nothing convincing in this advertisement to buy the Fevicol. Thus, the signs and symbols in this advertisement is not convincing to the audience.