Structuralism and Literary Criticism

Structure is essential in building anything that thrives.

In literary theory, structuralism is an approach to analyzing the narrative material by examining the underlying invariant structure. The best work in structuralist poetics has been done in the field of narrative.  Literary critic applying a structuralist literary theory might say that the authors do not write anything ‘really’ new, but their work has the same structure as old one. 

There are five main concepts used by Genette in structural narratology  1) Order 2) Frequency 3) Duration 4) Voice  and 5) Mood.

Movies, TV serials, Plays, Literature are based on either types of structural narration.

1) Order:  Order is the relation between the sequencing of events in the story and their arrangement in the narrative.

For example Crime based serials like CID, Savdhan India, crime patrol.

Movies based on duel heroes’ story which contains similar structure with different ending like Dharamveer, Suhaag, and Diwaar etc

2) Frequency: Frequency goes with separation between event and its narration allows with four possibilities. 1. Event can occur once and be narrated once (singular). 2. Event can occur times and narrated once (iterative). 3. Event can occur once and narrated times (repetitive). 4. Event can occur n times be narrated n times (multiple).

For example rebirth phenomenon in movies likes Karan Arjun, Om Shanti Om, and Karz.

3) Duration: Two elements are main in duration, i) discourse time and ii) narrative time. It is usually hard to define exactly the duration of an event within a narrative.

For example TV Serial Mahabharata

4) Voice: Voice is concerned with two questions, who narrate and from where?  1) Intradiegetic narrator: For example 'I went into the shop and I heard the salesman say: "We were robbed last week." Here the person telling the story was there and involved. He did it.

2) Extradiegetic narrator: 'Mukesh walked into the shop and heard the salesman say: "We were robbed last week." Here the person telling the story was not there, he did not see it happen, he just knows about it. 3) Homodiegetic narrator: Here the narrator present as a character in the story he tells 4) Heterodiegetic narrator: Here the narrator absent from the story he tells

5) Mood: Mood is depended on the ‘Distance’ and ‘perspective’ of the narrator, author and director. Mood is at some extent related with voice. Perspective of the narrator or director is known as ‘focalization’.