Thinking Activity of Structuralism and Literary Criticism

Hello readers,

This blog is a response of my curriculum activity. For more details, visit this blog.

Somehow Structuralism connected to linguistic branch. Ferdinand de Saussure gives the basic Idea of Structuralism in his work "General linguistic". This text becomes the basic text for studying Structuralism. The Linguistics looks at language from scientific point of view. All literary writers do something with science.

Saussure used three terms 

1. Langage

2. Langue

3. Parole

Langage includes the entire human potential for speech, whatever we understood or not, all kinds of words included in Langage. Langue is the part of langage, the words we understand and speak, Parole is the words which we utter.

We can see same or different structure in films also. In many films same structure applied, For eg, Boy and Girl are in love with each other but their family are enemies, therefore they cant meet and becomes two star crossed lovers. That similar pattern we can see in Isaaq and Romeo and Juliet. Both these films have similar structure.

Gerard Genette

Gerard Genette speaks about various things and gives more influential detail of Structuralism which we can applied in many films, advertisements and many other things. He speaks about sign in Literature and from that we conclude or think about its significance. He says that if writer questions the universe, the critic questions the literature, that is to say, the universe of signs, but what was a sign for the writer, becomes meaning for the critic, and in another way what was the meaning for the writer becomes a sign for the critic.

Examples of film:

Here I would like to take one example of a film, i.e. Khiladi 786. As we all know that mostly the Bollywood films who has title of Khiladi and related to it deals with Akshay kumar, who is famous for his action. The title itself is a sign that something is about action Hero. There is arbitrary in our mind. However the significance of the film is different, it is more comedy rather than action. Therefore sign and what does it signify is not always the same as we think. Sometimes the meaning is totally different.

In the film Bajrangi Bhaijan also we can see that the character of Munni also come out with common stereotypes of mind, that is because she is white Bajrangi Bhaijan assumes that she is Brahmin, but when she ate nonveg, he assumes that she might be Rajput girl. That is common beliefs regarding skin color but in reality, Munni is totally different character, she is Pakistani. in that way we can see change in the significance. Each and every signs bring many meanings some are in our mind and some are out of our understanding.

Sign= Signifier+ Signified

In this way we can see that significance of various signs changes according to different situation or place. The meaning is always depends upon other adjoining words. What is signified is according to the arbitrary of the word. Meaning keeps on changing from time to time of different words. Structuralist concerned with Signifier not with Signified. As signifier remains common for everyone

Significance of words "Fire" and "Ice" in the poems of Robert Frost and Spenser

We have many pre- assumptions regarding the words Fire and Ice. Whenever we think about fire, we have thoughts like something connected to anger, fury or like elements of violence, whereas on the other hand when we speak about Ice we think of peace, something related to calmness. we have given totally opposite meaning to both these words.

Amoretti XXX: My Love is like to ice, and I to fire

By Edmund Spenser

My Love is like to ice, and I to fire:

How comes it then that this her cold so great

Is not dissolved through my so hot desire,

But harder grows the more I her entreat?

Or how comes it that my exceeding heat

Is not allayed by her heart-frozen cold,

But that I burn much more in boiling sweat,

And feel my flames augmented manifold?

What more miraculous thing may be told,

That fire, which all things melts, should harden ice,

And ice, which is congeal’d with senseless cold,

Should kindle fire by wonderful device?

Such is the power of love in gentle mind,

That it can alter all the course of kind. 

These words are totally opposite to each other but the way it is presented in poem, it changes our pre-thoughts. Its significance changes according to the langue. 

In this poem the Fire signifies the desire of lover who is unable to melt the feelings of his beloved. He wants to change the thinking of his beloved with power of fire, but cold also same strong as fire and therefore he is unable to dissolved.

Fire and Ice by Robert Frost 

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I've tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

Both the words are same destructive, on one hand fire burns our skin, then on other hand Ice also gives us some kind of burning. Both Ice and Fire has a power to kill something. There is simmilarty of perishing the things. We waits for summer for getting cure from disease. Summer brings elements of Fire, similarly in foreign countries, where there is cold weather, the peoples waits for snow fall for getting cure from any types of disease. In short we can say that both can destroy the world, both are same powerful.