The National Teachers College

Quiapo, Manila
School of Advanced Studies
First Semester 2018- 2019

COURSE SUBJECT: Literary Theory and Criticism

TOPIC: Structuralism
DISCUSSANT: Mr. Ian E. Pagaran, LPT
PROFESSOR: Dr. Michael C. de Guzman
The structure of literary genres
Let’s begin our discussion of structuralist approaches to genre with a simplified summary of one
of its most complex and sweeping examples: what Northrop Frye’s theory of myths, which is a
theory of genres that seeks the structural
principles underlying the Western literary tradition.
1. the mythos of summer, and genre of romance.
This is the world of adventure, of successful quests in which brave, virtuous heroes and beautiful
maidens overcome
villainous threats to the achievement of their goals
2. the mythos of winter,
he associates it with the double genre of irony/satire. Irony is the real world seen through a
tragic lens, a world in which protagonists are defeated by the puzzling complexities of life. They
may try to be heroic, but they never achieve heroic stature. They may dream of happiness, but
they never attain it. They’re human, like us, and so they suffer Analogously, satire is the real
world seen through a comic lens, a world of human folly, excess, and incongruity.
3. the mythos of autumn.
In tragedy, a hero with the potential to be superior, like a romantic hero, falls from his romantic
height into the real world, the world of loss and defeat, from which he can never rise
4. the mythos of spring.
In comedy, a protagonist caught in a web of threatening, real-world difficulties manages,
through various twists in the plot, to overcome the circumstances that have thwarted him and
attain happiness. Frye argues that each genre identifies itself with a particular repertoire of
themes, character types, moods, kinds of action, and versions of the plot formulas summarized
above. For Frye, all narrative is structurally related because it’s all some version of some part of
the quest formula. Frye calls this method of classification archetypal criticism The word
archetype refers to any recurring image, character type, plot formula, or pattern of action.
Another method with which Frye seeks the structural principles that govern genres in the
Western literary tradition he calls his theory of modes. His classification of fiction into modes is
based on the protagonist’s power to take action as it compares to the power of other men and to
the power of their environment (nature and/or society). Perhaps a chart will help clarify Frye’s
system.
Protagonist’s power Fictional mode Character
type

1. Superior in kind to both men Myth Divine

and their environment beings
2. Superior in degree to both Romance Heroes

3. Superior in degree to men but High mimesis (imitation of Leaders

not to their environment life, like that found in epic
and tragedy)
4. Superior in no way Low mimesis (imitation of Common
life, like people
 that found in comedy and
realism)
5. Inferior Irony Antiheroes

The structure of narrative (narratology)

Greimas observes that human beings make meaning by structuring the world in terms of two
kinds of opposed pairs: “A is the opposite of B” and “–A (the negation of A) is the opposite of –B
(the negation of B).” In other words, we perceive every entity as having two aspects In our
narratives, this structure is embodied in the form of plot formulas, such as conflict and
resolution, struggle and reconciliation, and separation and union.
These plot formulas are carried out by means of actants, or character functions, which are slots
filled by the actual characters (surface phenomena) in a given story

Finally, in order to account for various possible narrative sequences, Greimas suggests the
following structures, which he derived from his study of folk tales.
1. Contractual structures involve the making/breaking of agreements or the
establishment/violation of prohibitions and the alienation or reconciliation that follows.
2. Performative structures involve the performance of tasks, trials, struggles, and the like.
3. Disjunctive structures involve travel, movement, arrivals, and departures.
Todorov
draws an analogy between the structural units of narrative—such as elements of characterization
and plot— and the structural units of language: parts of speech and their arrangement in
sentences and paragraphs.
Units of narrative Units of language
Characters <–––––––––––––––––––––––––> Proper nouns
Characters’ actions <–––––––––––––––––––––––––> Verbs
Characters’ attributes <–––––––––––––––––––––––––> Adjectives
Propositions <–––––––––––––––––––––––––> Sentences
Sequences <–––––––––––––––––––––––––> Paragraphs
Genette
Genette begins by differentiating among three levels of narrative that generally have been
included under the umbrella of the term narrative: story, narrative, and narration.
1. Story consists of the succession of events being narrated. The story thus provides the content
of the tale in the order in which events “actually happened”to the characters, an order that does
not always coincide with the order in which they are presented in the narrative.
2. Narrative refers to the actual words on the page, the discourse, the text itself, from which the
reader constructs both story and narration. The narrative is produced by the narrator in the act
of narration.
3. Narration refers to the act of telling the story to some audience and thereby producing the
narrative. However, just as the narrator almost never corresponds exactly to the author, the
audience (narratee) almost never corresponds exactly to the reader.
And he observes that story, narrative, and narration interact by means of three qualities, which
he calls tense, mood, and voice.