Structuralism and Post-Structuralism

Structuralism and post-structuralism are the most theoretically demanding approaches you will encounter at A-Level. They ask fundamental questions about how language produces meaning — and whether meaning can ever be stable, fixed, or certain. These ideas are challenging but immensely rewarding: once you grasp them, you will read literature differently.

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Structuralism

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913)

Saussure, a Swiss linguist, is the founding figure of structuralism. His key insight was that language is a system of signs, and that meaning is produced not by the relationship between words and things but by the relationship between signs within the system.