Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide

The chapter opens with a definition of structuralist literary criticism as the analysis of literary structures, like composition or characterization, and how they function across groups of texts or how a specific text demonstrates these structures. Structural criticism is not the analysis of a literary structure as it relates to the work’s meaning or literary value. Structuralism as a whole is the study of “the fundamental structures that underlie all human experience and, therefore, all human behavior and production” (182). Structuralism focuses on the interplay between the visible world (surface phenomena) and the invisible world (the underlying structures that govern these phenomena). 

For example, the “invisible” structure of phonemes governs the “visible” words of the English language. These structures are created by innate processes in the human mind, which implies that the world appears to have order because the mind imposes this order.

Structuralists define a structure as a “conceptual system” that has wholeness, transformation, and self-regulation. “Wholeness” means that it is a unified system distinct from its parts, e.g., “water is whole” and composed of oxygen and hydrogen (parts; 184). “Transformation” means that it is an evolving system, e.g., phonemes can be turned into new words. “Self-regulation” means that transformations must adhere to the existing structure, e.