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Semiotic Literary Criticism
Semiotic literary criticism, also called literary semiotics, is the approach to literary criticism informed by the theory of signs or semiotics. Semiotics, tied closely to the structuralism pioneered by Ferdinand de Saussure, was extremely influential in the development of literary theory out of the formalist approaches of the early twentieth century. History The early forms of literary semiotics grew out of formalist approaches to literature, especially Russian formalism, and structuralist linguistics, especially the Prague school. Notable early semiotic authors included Vladimir Propp, Algirdas Julius Greimas, and Viktor Shklovsky. These critics were concerned with a formal analysis of narrative forms which would resemble a literary mathematics, or at least a literary syntax, as far as possible. They proposed various formal notations for narrative components and transformations and attempted a descriptive taxonomy of existing stories along these lines. Propp's ''Morphology ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Literary Criticism
A genre of arts criticism, literary criticism or literary studies is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical analysis of literature's goals and methods. Although the two activities are closely related, literary critics are not always, and have not always been, theorists. Whether or not literary criticism should be considered a separate field of inquiry from literary theory is a matter of some controversy. For example, ''The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism'' draws no distinction between literary theory and literary criticism, and almost always uses the terms together to describe the same concept. Some critics consider literary criticism a practical application of literary theory, because criticism always deals directly with particular literary works, while theory may be more general or abstract. Literary criticism is often published in essay or book ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roland Barthes
Roland Gérard Barthes (; ; 12 November 1915 – 25 March 1980) was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His work engaged in the analysis of a variety of sign systems, mainly derived from Western popular culture. His ideas explored a diverse range of fields and influenced the development of multiple schools of theory, including structuralism, anthropology, literary theory, and post-structuralism. Barthes is perhaps best known for his 1957 essay collection ''Mythologies'', which contained reflections on popular culture, and the 1967/1968 essay " The Death of the Author", which critiqued traditional approaches in literary criticism. During his academic career he was primarily associated with the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and the Collège de France. Biography Early life Roland Barthes was born on 12 November 1915 in the town of Cherbourg in Normandy. His father, naval officer Louis Barthes, was killed i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Structuralist Literary Criticism
Structuralism is an intellectual current and methodological approach, primarily in the social sciences, that interprets elements of human culture by way of their relationship to a broader system. It works to uncover the structural patterns that underlie all the things that humans do, think, perceive, and feel. Alternatively, as summarized by philosopher Simon Blackburn, structuralism is: Blackburn, Simon, ed. 2008. "Structuralism." In ''Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy'' (2nd rev. ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. . p. 353."The belief that phenomena of human life are not intelligible except through their interrelations. These relations constitute a structure, and behind local variations in the surface phenomena there are constant laws of abstract structure." History and background The term ''structuralism'' is ambiguous, referring to different schools of thought in different contexts. As such, the movement in humanities and social sciences called structuralism relates ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco (5 January 1932 – 19 February 2016) was an Italian Medieval studies, medievalist, philosopher, Semiotics, semiotician, novelist, cultural critic, and political and social commentator. In English, he is best known for his popular 1980 novel ''The Name of the Rose'', a historical mystery combining semiotics in fiction with biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory, as well as ''Foucault's Pendulum'', his 1988 novel which touches on similar themes. Eco wrote prolifically throughout his life, with his output including children's books, translations from French and English, in addition to a twice-monthly newspaper column "La Bustina di Minerva" (Minerva's Matchbook) in the magazine ''L'Espresso'' beginning in 1985, with his last column (a critical appraisal of the Romanticism, Romantic paintings of Francesco Hayez) appearing 27 January 2016. At the time of his death, he was an Emeritus professor at the University of Bologna, where he taught for much of hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Riffaterre
Michel Riffaterre (; 20 November 1924 in Bourganeuf, Creuse – 27 May 2006 in New York City, New York), known as Michael Riffaterre, was an influential French literary critic and theorist. He pursued a generally structuralism, structuralist approach. He is well known in particular for his book ''Semiotics of Poetry'', and his conceptions of hypogram and syllepsis. Kvas observes three phases in Riffaterre's work: stylistic, semiotic, and the intertextual phase. The most important is his intertextual phase in which he develops his understanding of intertextuality. For Riffaterre, "intertextuality is not a felicitous surplus, the privilege of a good memory or a classical education. The term indeed refers to an operation of the reader's mind, but it is an obligatory one, necessary to any textual decoding. Intertextuality necessarily complements our experience of textuality. It is the perception that our reading of the text cannot be complete or satisfactory without going throu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Julia Kristeva
Julia Kristeva (; ; born Yuliya Stoyanova Krasteva, ; on 24 June 1941) is a Bulgarian-French philosopher, literary critic, semiotician, psychoanalyst, feminist, and novelist who has lived in France since the mid-1960s. She has taught at Columbia University, and is now a professor emerita at Université Paris Cité. The author of more than 30 books, including '' Powers of Horror'', ''Tales of Love'', ''Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia'', ''Proust and the Sense of Time'', and the trilogy ''Female Genius'', she has been awarded Commander of the Legion of Honor, Commander of the Order of Merit, the Holberg International Memorial Prize, the Hannah Arendt Prize, and the Vision 97 Foundation Prize, awarded by the Havel Foundation. Kristeva became influential in international critical analysis, cultural studies and feminism after publishing her first book, ''Semeiotikè'', in 1969. Her sizeable body of work includes books and essays that address intertextuality, the semioti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Juri Lotman
Juri Lotman (; 28 February 1922 – 28 October 1993) was a prominent Russian-Estonian literary scholar, semiotician, and historian of Russian culture, who worked at the University of Tartu. He was elected a member of the British Academy (1977), the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (1987), the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (1989) and the Estonian Academy of Sciences (1990). He was a founder of the Tartu–Moscow Semiotic School. The number of his printed works exceeds 800 titles. His extensive archive (now kept at the University of Tallinn and at the Tartu University Library) includes his correspondence with a number of Russian and Western intellectuals. Biography Juri Lotman was born in the Jewish intellectual family of lawyer Mikhail Lotman and Sorbonne-educated dentist Aleksandra Lotman in Petrograd, Russia. His elder sister Inna Obraztsova graduated from Leningrad Conservatory and became a composer and lecturer of musical theory, his younger sister Victoria ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mikhail Bakhtin
Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin (; rus, Михаи́л Миха́йлович Бахти́н, , mʲɪxɐˈil mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪdʑ bɐxˈtʲin; – 7 March 1975) was a Russian people, Russian philosopher and literary critic who worked on the philosophy of language, ethics, and literary theory. His writings, on a variety of subjects, inspired scholars working in a number of different traditions (Marxism, semiotics, structuralism, religious criticism) and in disciplines as diverse as literary criticism, history, philosophy, sociology, anthropology and psychology. Although Bakhtin was active in the debates on aesthetics and literature that took place in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, his distinctive position did not become well known until he was rediscovered by Russian scholars in the 1960s. Early life Bakhtin was born in Oryol, Russian Empire, Russia, to an old family of the nobility. His father was the manager of a bank and worked in several cities. For this reason Bakhtin spen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tzvetan Todorov
Tzvetan Todorov (; ; ; 1 March 1939 – 7 February 2017) was a Bulgarian- French historian, philosopher, structuralist literary critic, sociologist and essayist. He was the author of many books and essays, which have had a significant influence in anthropology, sociology, semiotics, literary theory, intellectual history and culture theory. Early life Tzvetan Todorov was born on 1 March 1939 in Sofia, Bulgaria. He earned an M.A. in philology at the University of Sofia in 1963. He enrolled at the University of Paris to do his doctorat de troisième cycle (equivalent to the Ph.D.) in 1966 and his doctorat ès lettres in 1970. Career Todorov was appointed to his post as a director of research at the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in 1968. In 1970, he helped to found the journal ''Poétique'', of which he remained one of the managing editors until 1979. With structuralist literary critic Gérard Genette, he edited the ''Collection Poétique'', the series ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Post-structuralist
Post-structuralism is a philosophical movement that questions the objectivity or stability of the various interpretive structures that are posited by structuralism and considers them to be constituted by broader systems of Power (social and political), power. Although different post-structuralists present different critiques of structuralism, common themes include the rejection of the self-sufficiency of structuralism, as well as an interrogation of the binary oppositions that constitute its structures. Accordingly, post-structuralism discards the idea of interpreting media (or the world) within pre-established, socially constructed structures.José Guilherme Merquior, Merquior, José G. 1987. ''Foucault'', (Fontana Modern Masters series). University of California Press. . ''Structuralism'' proposes that human culture can be understood by means of a Structural linguistics, structure that is modeled on language. As a result, there is concrete reality on the one hand, abstract idea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Syntax
In linguistics, syntax ( ) is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituency), agreement, the nature of crosslinguistic variation, and the relationship between form and meaning (semantics). Diverse approaches, such as generative grammar and functional grammar, offer unique perspectives on syntax, reflecting its complexity and centrality to understanding human language. Etymology The word ''syntax'' comes from the ancient Greek word , meaning an orderly or systematic arrangement, which consists of (''syn-'', "together" or "alike"), and (''táxis'', "arrangement"). In Hellenistic Greek, this also specifically developed a use referring to the grammatical order of words, with a slightly altered spelling: . The English term, which first appeared in 1548, is partly borrowed from Latin () and Greek, though the L ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Semiotics
Semiotics ( ) is the systematic study of sign processes and the communication of meaning. In semiotics, a sign is defined as anything that communicates intentional and unintentional meaning or feelings to the sign's interpreter. Semiosis is any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs. Signs often are communicated by verbal language, but also by gestures, or by other forms of language, e.g. artistic ones (music, painting, sculpture, etc.). Contemporary semiotics is a branch of science that generally studies meaning-making (whether communicated or not) and various types of knowledge. Unlike linguistics, semiotics also studies non-linguistic sign systems. Semiotics includes the study of indication, designation, likeness, analogy, allegory, metonymy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication. Semiotics is frequently seen as having important anthropological and sociological dimensions. Some semioticians regard every cultural phenomenon as being able to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
