Gerard Genette's "Structuralism and literary criticism"

Gerard Genette's "Structuralism and literary criticism"

                Gérard Genette (born 1930) is a French literary theorist, associated in particular with the structuralist movement and such figures as Roland Barthes and Claude Lévi-Strauss, from whom he adopted the concept of bricolage.

         Structuralism is a systematic study of language. In this term, we can studies language from various angles. Structuralism movement first time seen in the work of the anthropologist Claude Levi - Strauss.

        The meaning of the word can be studied from various contexts and which context is appropriate with the situations. What we can interpret more about the word that is calls the Structural study of the literary works.

Let's discuss the structural analysis of two poems through sign, signifier and signified.

Fire and ice

My Love is like to ice, and I to fire:

How comes it then that this her cold so great

Is not dissolved through my so hot desire,

But harder grows the more I her entreat?

Or how comes it that my exceeding heat

Is not allayed by her heart-frozen cold,

But that I burn much more in boiling sweat,

And feel my flames augmented manifold?

What more miraculous thing may be told,

That fire, which all things melts, should harden ice,

And ice, which is congeal’d with senseless cold,

Should kindle fire by wonderful device?

Such is the power of love in gentle mind,

That it can alter all the course of kind.

-By Edmund Spenser

            The poem by Edmund Spenser “Ice and fire” is about his beloved. He says that his love is like fire and his beloved is like ice which means that poet’s beloved is ignore the love of poet.

            The paradox is, if fire goes near to the ice than ice should be melt and the heat should be decrease, but that's not happening but both grows on its own way.

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

-By Robert Frost

            In the poem by Robert Frost “fire and ice” Frost talking about the end of the world that weather it will end on fire or ice then he says that both have ability to destroy world. The fire represents the desire, hate ,emotion.

            As we first see the word like fire and ice, the first thing came in our mind is that fire is something bad and ice is something good but here in this both poem though they both have different theme but then even both poet shows that fire is good and ice is suggest something bad. Edmund Spenser says that his love is like fire but his beloved is like ice who ignore every effort of poet and Frost also compare his passionate desires with fire and hatred with ice. Fire and ice also have same power of destruction. Both are different but both have power of destruction.