Structuralism
Structuralism marks the beginning of a new way of analyzing literary texts. Taking inspiration from Ferdinand de Saussure's concepts and analytic distinctions, structuralism conceives literature as a second order signifying system that uses the first order structural system of language as its medium. This particular movement or rather mode of criticism was inaugurated in the 1950s by French structural anthropologist, Claude Levi Strauss, who used Saussure's model of linguistics to analyze such cultural phenomena as mythology, kinship relations,etc. When it came to literary narratives, Gerard Genette used the structuralist linguistic model and came up with five elements to be kept in mind while analyzing them. Born in 1930, Gerard Genette, is particularly noted for his association with the structuralist critics such as Roland Barthes and Claude Levi Strauss from whom he adapted the concept of bricolage ; the idea that methods developed for the study of one discipline could be...