Structuralism emerged in the 1950s in France and became a major force in the 1960s mainly through the influence of the writings of the social anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, particularly his book
La Pensée Sauvage(1962), and the literary critic, Roland Barthes. It is a method of analysing cultural phenomena that is largely derived from the linguistics of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913). Russian Formalism and the Prague Linguistic Circle in the 1920s and 1930s in their innovatory work in literary criticism and theory to some extent anticipated structuralism. Roman Jakobson is a particularly significant precursor of French structuralism in that he was a Russian Formalist who left Russia for Prague, became a major figure in the Prague school, and later…
1650 words
Citation: Newton, Ken. "Structuralism". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 27 September 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1063, accessed 22 November 2024.]
