Structuralism

• "The Saussurean view of linguistics has generated a method of literary criticism that has proved remarkably successful", Daniel Albright , "Quantum poetics",CUP, 1997, p.282
• "structuralism is not particularly interested in meaning per se, but rather in attempting to describe and understand the conventions and modes of signification which make it possible to 'mean'", "Modern Literary Theory (3rd Edition)", Rice and Waugh, Arnold, 1996, p.22.
• "Structuralism ... starts off from the observation that every concept in a given system is determined by all other concepts of the system and has no significance by itself alone ... there is an interrelation between the data (facts) and the philosophical assumptions, not a unilateral dependence", Garvin, "a Prague School Reader on Esthetics, Literary Structure and Style", vi
• "The failure of the structuralist program is pretty much a matter of history. Attempts to treat literature as if it had the structure of a language ... or to see literary structures as the result of basic structures of human thought, or to causally link differences in languages with incommensurable differences in modes of conceptualizing the world either failed to be convincing or proved trivial. Although the promise of structuralism was exaggerated, the intellectual investment of quite a few critics was too heavy for it to be abandoned without a struggle. The claims of structuralism therefore underwent a process of increasing moderation", "Literary Meaning", W.V. Harris, Macmillan, 1996, p.76.
• "Structuralist Analysis typically searches for hierarchical strings of binary oppositions" - "Studying Literature", Goring, Hawthorn and Mitchell, Arnold, 2001