What does it mean by Post structuralism: Post structuralism emerged in the 1950s and 1960s as a movement standing against the key assumptions underlying the popular structuralism movement. Structuralism,its predecessiong school of thought,emphasized on the author as the prime subject of inquiry. In literary context,the author was considered all in all and was looked upon as the sole element of the work’s semantic content.But in opposition to this author centric notion rose up post-structuralism in France rejecting the claims of the predecessing movement.According to this new emerging wave of thought ,the reader is also significant in his own way along with the creator and the meaning that he imparts to the text by his interpretation
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In his 1895 essay Crisis in Poetry Mallarme explains that for a poem to be pure, to retain its originality, the poet’s voice must be muted and also the initiative taken by the words should be stilled,so that the poet’s presence and overall reign over it will be absent. For instance,we take into account T.S Eliot’s famous poem The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock. The character of Prufrock is not necessarily the reflection or the portrayal of Eliot himself. Alfred Prufrock is created in our imagination and perception with the language that the poet has employed- the use of various metaphors, allusions, connotations etc. Prufrock is indecisive, battered by life’s complexities and we need to understand him not through Eliot’s language, but through Prufrock’s language. To suppress the authority of the author over the text,another prominent French essayist Paul Valerie has stressed on the linguistic aspect of the text,to affirm it again that it is the language which acts and not the person who writes. This is what post-structuralism held at its core. In his collection of thoughts Odds and Ends published sometime between 1924 and 1930,Valerie explains that once a piece of work has been published before the world,the author’s authority or intend over its meaning holds no validity. He explains it with an example that, if he makes a portrait of Pierre and if an observer finds it more like Derrida than Pierre, than as a creator he has nothing to say against it. Since such things are left to the imagination of the reader/observer to create whatever meaning the mind might render. A poem,a piece of story,a novel- they are always detached from their writer right at birth and then travels roundthe world beyond the power of the creator to embrace the arms of the awaited readers. The readers then in the process create a new
In his 1895 essay Crisis in Poetry Mallarme explains that for a poem to be pure, to retain its originality, the poet’s voice must be muted and also the initiative taken by the words should be stilled,so that the poet’s presence and overall reign over it will be absent. For instance,we take into account T.S Eliot’s famous poem The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock. The character of Prufrock is not necessarily the reflection or the portrayal of Eliot himself. Alfred Prufrock is created in our imagination and perception with the language that the poet has employed- the use of various metaphors, allusions, connotations etc. Prufrock is indecisive, battered by life’s complexities and we need to understand him not through Eliot’s language, but through Prufrock’s language. To suppress the authority of the author over the text,another prominent French essayist Paul Valerie has stressed on the linguistic aspect of the text,to affirm it again that it is the language which acts and not the person who writes. This is what post-structuralism held at its core. In his collection of thoughts Odds and Ends published sometime between 1924 and 1930,Valerie explains that once a piece of work has been published before the world,the author’s authority or intend over its meaning holds no validity. He explains it with an example that, if he makes a portrait of Pierre and if an observer finds it more like Derrida than Pierre, than as a creator he has nothing to say against it. Since such things are left to the imagination of the reader/observer to create whatever meaning the mind might render. A poem,a piece of story,a novel- they are always detached from their writer right at birth and then travels roundthe world beyond the power of the creator to embrace the arms of the awaited readers. The readers then in the process create a new