Theoretical Paradigm Question Answers

Answer # 1

Formalism, Structuralism, Post-structuralism and New Historicism

Literary theory refers to the examination of literature under basic critical principles from a variety of perspectives that include formalism, structuralism, poststructuralism, and New Historicism. These movements all focus on the way in which language shapes and orders not only the experience of literature but the totality of human experience.

Structuralism and formalism may sound like they should mean the same thing, but they are different. Formalism seeks to interpret literary texts and words outside its relation to the culture around it. By not focusing on the cultures or historical background in relation to the text, the audience is somewhat free from stereotypical thinking and has the opportunity to form unbiased opinions. On the other hand, Structuralism opposes one idea; instead, it attempts to understand a concept in relation to what it does not represent, focusing on binary opposition. Deconstructionists, in particular, examine literary texts through a Poststructuralist lens, regarding the apparent meaning of a text as inherently unstable and subject to the shifting social, historical, ethnic, and inter-textual influences that help produce the work itself. New Historicism rejects the traditional distinction between the text and the context—that is, between the play or poem and the historical conditions existing at the time it was written.

Formalism questions genre (i.e. what makes a poem a poem, not an epic). Criticism is categorized into four types: mimetic, rhetorical, expressive and formal. Structuralism questions the limits of language. In essence, human reality is structured, yet limited, by language. Unlike formalism, structuralism focuses on the belief that a concept can have different interpretations. Anything that is being interpreted as a sign or a sign of a sign has infinite interpretation.

Where traditional historical criticism sees a literary text against a backdrop of historical events, New Historicism views the text as a participant in a historical or political process that it "reconceives”. In the words of the New Historicist Louis Montrose, this approach is interested in "the historicity of texts and the textuality of history." Deconstruction and poststructuralism investigate the ways in which meaning is created through binary oppositions and difference. In the example man/woman, man is the "norm" and woman is defined in its shadow. At its best deconstruction attempts to explode the original superior/inferior relationship, thereby, leveling the playing field.

With the course of the time, literary theories have given birth to a bewildering array of contesting schools of thoughts, each with its own terminology, as well as cultural and political agenda. Though all of the above discussed theories help criticizing the text and the concepts, each of them rejects one or another perception of each other.

Answer 2

Post-Structuralism and Structuralism

Structuralism and post-structuralism have much in common but they also possess certain different which help people define the terms. On one hand post-structuralism has retained it's emphasize of structuralism on language and the belief system that the coded system of meanings can represent all cultural systems rather than directly dealing the reality. On the other hand, ...