Structuralism

Structuralism:

                      

Hello Readers,

This blog is a part of my academic activity which is given on this blog.

Definition:

“A method of analysis (as of literary text or a political system) that is related to cultural anthropology and that is related to culturing patterns of thought and behavior”.

                                                                              - Merriam webster

Structuralism is an antropoligal movement associated especially with Claude Levi – Strauss that seeks to analyze social relationship in terms of highly abstract relational structures often expressed in a logical symbolism.
Structuralism focuses on the study of literature. It is form of criticism which sought to understand a work of art in context of the structure which have genre, culture and language. All most all literary critic focused on importance of structure.

Some imporatance structuralist:

1) Gerard Genette

2) Ferdinand De Saussure

3) Roland Barth

4) Claude Levi – Strauss

Gerard Genette: He is French literary theorist, associated with the structuralist movement. His essay “structuralism and literary criticism” is most important essay to understand structuralism. He talks about concept of narratology.

1) Order

2) Frequency

3) Duration

4) Voice

5) Mood

6) Focalization

Ferdinand De Saussure was talks about linguistic structure. In which he has emphasized on three terms,

Parole: It is our individual utterance

Langue: The system that each of us uses to generate discourse that is intelligible to others.

Language: The entire human potential speech.

He also emphasized on meaning of words. Saussure’s linguistics has fundamentally three assumptions.

1.    Arbitrary

2.    Conventional

3.    Relational.

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With the view point of structuralist I would like to analyze a bollywood movie “Ram Leela” with the genre of ‘revenge’ and ‘love’.

                                  

This movie is written by Siddharth Garima and Directed by Sanjay leela Bhansali. Its original title is “Goliyon ki raasleela Ram Leela”. In this movie scene is laid in fair Gujarat, in northwest India. Language of this movie is Hindi and Gujarati. In this movie we see conflict between ‘Marvada’ and ‘Rajputana’. The story is about two character name Ram and Leela. Both are felt in love. The feeling is very much mutual as per “Romeo and Juliet”. The lover has to deal with the conflict between their respective families and the repercussions of skirmishes between them. Both families wont to take revenge to each other so, they are not meet. At the end of the movie both are died because of family wont to revenge.

In this movie we see Saussure’s term on which structuralism is based. Here Parole – English language

          Langue – Gujarati Language

          Language – Hindi Language.

In this movie major language is Gujarati and Hindi. English language is used a little bit in this movie with the help of that NIR person with him Leela’s mother wont to marry Leela with him. So in this sense English is parole Language. It is used a little bit in this movie.