Unfortunately, structuralism is so dependent upon a background in linguistics,
semiotics, and other relatively esoteric elements that it is very difficult to explain its use
in literary criticism, but I will start by describing what structuralists do
not concern themselves with in analyzing a literary work and then move to
what structuralism attempts to accomplish.
When a structuralist critic looks
at a poem, for example, they are not looking to interpret the work as the product of the poet's
state of mind at a particular time or as a reflection of the period in which a poem was written.
Historical, social, economic, and political concerns are not important to structuralism.
Instead, a structuralist critic looks at the structure of a poem (e. g., sonnet, villanelle),
its vocabulary and sentence structure, and its use of metaphorical language. Structuralism
focuses on what is intrinsic to the work (that is, only what is within the
poem itself) and ignores extrinsic matter. Extrinsic matters...
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