Structuralism, Lodge, The Oval Portrait & Cat in the Rain

FL200 - Structuralism - BT #2 – pp. 39-60
Some Elements of Structuralism and its Application to Literary Theory
Cf. WWW: http://www.brocku.ca/english/courses/4F70/struct.html
1) 37- Definition of Structuralism
a) What are these “structures”? Where do they come from?
b) Where does meaning reside for structuralists?
2) 38- The structuralist approach
a) How does it approach texts?
b) What does it do to them in relation to structures? Give an example.
3) 41-44 Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913)
Cf. WWW: http://www.criticism.com/md/the_sign.html &
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/saussure.htm
a) What are Saussure’s three main pronouncements on meaning and language?
b) Why can we say that words are “unmotivated signs”?
c) What is the relation between the arbitrariness of signs and the notion that language reflects or represents reality?
d) Give an example of a “paradigmatic chain”.
e) Give an example of a “dyad”.
f) In what sense is meaning attributed to objects or ideas by the human mind?
g) What are the consequences of such attribution?
h) Give an example of how language constitutes the so-called objective world?
i) Define langue and parole? Give an example of these as applied to literature.
4) 47- Structuralism and culture
a) What do structuralists read as if it were a language? How is this possible?
5) 48- Roland Barthes (1915-1980)
Cf. WWW: http://www.sunderland.ac.uk/~os0tmc/myth.htm
a) What does Barthes accomplish in his work, Mythologies (1957)?
6) 49- What do structuralist critics do? : You tell me.
a) What did we attempt to do of the options listed after number 1?
7) 50-51 Barthes’s 5 Codes (S/Z [1970]): http://www.cla.purdue.edu/English/theory/narratology/modules/barthescodes.html
8) READ “The Oval Portrait”: BT Appendix 1 - pp. 272-275
9) 56- What does Barry mean by his “paraphrase” of D.H. Lawrence: “[N]ever trust the moral, trust the tale”?
10) READ: David Lodge – “Analysis and Interpretation of the Realist Text”, pp. 24-42 and be prepared to discuss his approach to the story by Hemingway: “Cat in the Rain” included in the last 3 pages of the article.