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Structuralism claimed to be objective and scientific and that by being systematic, it would yield answers . However there were never any answers. Roland Barthes' 'The Death of the Author' became the turning point in structuralism. Death here is figurative - when the book is complete and published and the author no longer has any control over the book and how it is read and what meanings are drawn from his/her text. "The death of the author is the birth of the reader." Post-structuralism reveals that everything has a centre except for language. A centre is basically the structure, a point of reference - the Sun in the Solar System, Jupiter for all its moons, for instance. Language cannot have a centre. It is fluid and dynamic. This is the reason that one word may have more than one meaning. In structuralism: A specific domain of culture understood through a structure Modelled on language Relates literary texts to a larger structure (a particular genre) E...

things are not understood in isolation units combine with each other based on rules the world is made up of structures, made up of systems, made up of units structuralist analysis - interrelationship of units and rules -  meaning linguistics - a structuralist perspective: literary texts are made up of language, which is made up of words (units) and grammar (rules) 9 Nov 2015 structure is universal; content may differ - ex: Mad Libs Meanings are outside; attributed - human mind structures units and rules to give meaning focus on chickens (structures) not eggs (individual texts/ elements) everything is understood in terms of larger context structure remains constant - universal elements and their interpretations may differ based on sociocultural context no text has inherent, intrinsic meaning; meaning is attributed to it by us deeply rooted in linguistics (the science of language) Ferdinand de Saussure literature is made up of language (language is a signi...