Structuralism: Moscow—Prague—Paris: Moscow—Prague—Paris

Author: Blokman
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-11-01
Features: Introducing structuralism into the field of literary research, it is essentially not an interpretive criticism but provides a method that, once applied to literary works, can produce previously unknown meanings. Rather than being a criticism of discovery or assignment of meaning, it is a poetics aimed at establishing the conditions for the production of meaning. It directs new attention to the act of reading, attempting to explain how we derive meaning from texts and to elucidate the interpretive processes upon which the discipline of literature is built.
The structuralist movement was one of the most significant academic trends in 20th-century Western thought. This book offers an accessible yet in-depth introduction and analysis of this intellectual movement, discussing four developmental stages: Moscow Literary Formalism, Prague Philosophical and Literary Functionalism, Paris Humanistic Structuralism, and the Post-structuralist era. The Louvain Philosophical Review calls this book one of the authoritative works on the history of structuralism. It is suitable for readers in fields such as philosophy, aesthetics, literature, linguistics, history, sociology, anthropology, and art theory.