Structuralism
and literary criticism by Gerard Genette:
Structuralism
is a method of interpretation and analysis of aspect of human cognition,
behavior, culture and experience which focuses on relationships of contrast
between elements in a conceptual system.
Gerard Genette writes at the outset in his essay
“structuralism and literary criticism” that methods developed for the study of
one discipline could be satisfactorily applied to the study of other discipline
as well. Structuralism is name given to Saussure’s approach to language as
system or relationship.
Structuralism
consists of six parts,
1) Oder
2) Frequency
3) Duration
4) Voice
5) Mood
6)
Focalization
In
Literature, an illustration of this can be seen fairy tales such as Cinderella,
Snow white, sleeping beauty, etc… , In this stories, the units are princess,
stepmother, witch and prince and rules are stepmother/ witches are evil,
princesses are victims, and princess and princesses have to marry. The unite
and rules may differ, but the underlying structures are the same for all fairy
tales. Stucturalists believe that the underlying structure. Which organized
rules and units into meaningful systems are generated by the human mindset and
not by sense perception.
With the
view point of structuralist I would like to analyse a Bollywood movie
“Badlapur”. It is revenge film directed by Sriram raghvan. Main protagonist
Raghav takes revenge of his wife and son.
His wife and son are murdered by bank robbers. In this movie the
circumstances of murder are revealed to a detective it is a structure of
revenge movie.
