structuralism

is not concerned with the content (meaning) of utterances, such as individual literary texts, but with establishing the rules and codes (the system) which allow for the articulation of that content in the first place.

Believing that a focus on language (after Saussure) would bring such disciplines a greater objectivity and even scientific status, structuralism rejects more traditional Humanistic approaches to meaning and history by focusing on the rules and codes of structural systems rather than on the human subjects who work with and under such systems.

is a critical approach that studies the system out of which literary texts emerge, not literary texts in and for themselves.

Structuralism is, therefore, not concerned with the content (meaning) of utterances, such as individual literary texts, but with establishing the rules and codes (the system) which allow for the articulation of that content in the first place. Structuralism, as a critical approach, studies the system out of which literary texts emerge: it does not, therefore, study literary texts in and for themselves.

Allen GrahamThinkers

Allen Graham