10 FRENCH STRUCTURALISM

Structuralism rose to prominence in France through the application

by the French anthropologist, Claude Levi-Strauss, of Saussurian
structural linguistics to the study of such phenomena as myths,
rituals, kinship relations, eating conventions. (For a discussion of
Saussure, see the introduction to 'Linguistic Criticism'). These
were understood as signifying systems and therefore open to a
linguistic type of analysis in which attention was focused not on
empirical or functional matters but on myth or ritual as a set of
relations in which meaning was created by differences between
signifying elements. This use of language as a model for
understanding aspects of reality that are predominantly non-
linguistic in character established structuralism, particularly in the
1960s, as a powerful alternative to positivistic or empiricist methods
of analysis.
Literature seemed especially appropriate to a structuralist
approach since it was wholly made up of language. Thus
structuralist literary criticism tends to emphasise the system of
conventions which makes literature possible and to attach little
importance to authorial or historical considerations or to questions
of meaning or reference. As language from a Saussurian point of
view is seen as a signifying system in which the relations between
the elements that make up the system are crucial, so literature
could also be seen as embodying systematic sets of rules and codes
which enable literature to signify.
By considering literary texts as 'paroles' which must be
understood in relation to 'langue' or the underlying signifying
system, structuralist literary criticism inevitably concerned itself
predominantly with poetics as a general science of literature.
Individual texts were used mainly to exemplify general
characteristics of literature as a whole. Tzvetan Todorov and
Gerard Genette are most associated with this approach as can be
seen in the selections from their work reprinted here. The most
famous structuralist critic was Roland Barthes, but Barthes
gradually moved away from a strictly structuralist position. It is
thus appropriate to end the first section of this Reader with his
article 'Science versus Literature' since it points the way towards
post-structuralism which has been the dominant influence on more

K. M. Newton (ed.), Twentieth-Century Literary Theory

© Macmillan Publishers Limited 1988
132 RUSSIAN FORMALISM TO FRENCH STRUCTURALISM

recent literary theory and which will open Section II, 'Post-
Structuralism and After'.

FURTHER READING

Roland Barthes, Critical Essays, trans. Richard Howard (Evanston, Ill.,

1972).
Jonathan Culler, Barthes (London, 1983).
- - , Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature
(London, 1975).
Jacques Ehrmann {ed.), Structuralism (New York, 1970).
Terence Hawkes, Structuralism and Semiotics (London, 1977).
Fredric Jameson, The Prison-House of Language: A Critical Account of
Structuralism and Russian Formalism (Princeton, NJ., 1972).
Michael Lane (ed.), Structuralism: A Reader (London, 1970).
Robert Scholes, Structuralism in Literature: An Introduction (New Haven,
Conn., 1974).
Susan Sontag {ed.), A Barthes Reader (London, 1972).
John Sturrock {ed.), Structuralism and Since: From Livi-Strauss to Derrida
(Oxford, 1979).

Tzvetan Todorov: 'Definition of Poetics'

To understand what poetics is, we must start from a general and of

course a somewhat simplified image of literary studies. It is
unnecessary to describe actual schools and tendencies; it will suffice
to recall the positions taken with regard to several basic choices.
Initially there are two attitudes to be distinguished: one sees the
literary text itself as a sufficient object of knowledge; the other
considers each individual text as the manifestation of an abstract
structure. (I herewith disregard biographical studies, which are not
literary, as well as journalistic writings, which are not 'studies'.)
These two options are not, as we shall see, incompatible; we can
even say that they achieve a necessary complementarity; nonetheless,
depending on whether we emphasize one or the other, we can
clearly distinguish between the two tendencies.
Let us begin with a few words about the first attitude, for which
the literary work is the ultimate and unique object, and which we

Reprinted from Introduction to Poetics, trans. Richard Howard (Brighton,

1981), pp.3-ll.