Two main tracks in literary
theory
• One is from I.A Richards’ notion of
“practical criticism”
• “close reading”
• The best way to study literature was to
study the text itself in close detail, and to
disregard anything outside the text itself,
including the author’s biography, the
historical context, how it related to other
works etc.
General principles of structuralism
1. Meaning occurs through difference
2. Relations among signs are of two sorts,
contiguity and substitutability
3. Structuralism notes that much of our
imaginative world is structured of, and
structured by, binary oppositions
4. Structuralism forms the basis for
semiotics, the study of signs, a sign is a
union of signifier and signified
• Through structuralism, literature is seen as a
whole; it functions as a system of meaning and
reference no matter how many works there are,
two or two thousand. Thus any work becomes
the parole, the individual articulation, of a
cultural langue, or a system of signification. As
literature is a system, no work of literature is an
autonomous whole; similarly, literature itself is
not autonomous but is part of the larger
structures of signification of the culture.
Is deconstruction similar to destruction?
Literary Deconstruction:
--show the hidden gaps in a text’s
meaning.
Textual unity
-- Reverse the “hierarchical” binaries,
and allow the latter to supplement the
formers.
-- de-stabilize, de-center, but not destroy.
Why is language ambiguous?
• Why are meanings undecidable & slippery?
1. Polysemy: Traces of other signs, other
meanings. (e.g. national “birthday”;; the
uncanny)
2. Multiple Context; Reference Undecidable.
(e.g. “The end of the world” )
3. Meaning is not “present” in language; it
happens “in between” signifiers.
4. (intention and the unconscious)
Writing and Différance
Language a system of difference  of Différance.
* While structualists had treated binary
oppositions as stable terms in a formal
structure, Derrida sees them as organized in
unstable disequilibrium.  because of the
presence/absence of traces
* Derrida sees the signified’s also in a relation
of difference, and they are turned into
signifiers floating signifiers.
Writing and Différance
Language a system of difference  of Différance.
* While structualists had treated binary
oppositions as stable terms in a formal
structure, Derrida sees them as organized in
unstable disequilibrium.  because of the
presence/absence of traces
* Derrida sees the signified’s also in a relation
of difference, and they are turned into
signifiers floating signifiers.