Peirce's concept of icon sheds light on the iconic mapping relationship between structural linguistics and structuralist literary criticism, and the failure of the latter.As a revolt against the traditional extrin...Peirce's concept of icon sheds light on the iconic mapping relationship between structural linguistics and structuralist literary criticism, and the failure of the latter.As a revolt against the traditional extrinsic approaches to literature, structuralist literary criticism flourished as an important literary movement in the 1950 s and 1960 s.However, its difficulties cannot be ignored.The failure of structuralist literary criticism can be found deeply rooted in structural linguistics.Guided by the spirit of iconic mapping and semiotic interdisciplinarity, the present paper makes an interdisciplinary investigation into the linguistic roots of structuralist literary criticism.First of all, it examines the concept of "a closed system," initially established by Ferdinand de Saussure in his Course in General Linguistics, which occupies a predominant position in sructuralist criticism.Secondly, it looks at how structuralist literary criticism borrows the principle of digging various levels of structures from structural linguistics; and thirdly, how the typical notion of relations in structural linguistics is also widely used in structuralist literary analysis.By probing into the linguistic roots of structuralist criticism, this paper aims to clarify the cause of the failure of structuralist criticism.展开更多
文摘Peirce's concept of icon sheds light on the iconic mapping relationship between structural linguistics and structuralist literary criticism, and the failure of the latter.As a revolt against the traditional extrinsic approaches to literature, structuralist literary criticism flourished as an important literary movement in the 1950 s and 1960 s.However, its difficulties cannot be ignored.The failure of structuralist literary criticism can be found deeply rooted in structural linguistics.Guided by the spirit of iconic mapping and semiotic interdisciplinarity, the present paper makes an interdisciplinary investigation into the linguistic roots of structuralist literary criticism.First of all, it examines the concept of "a closed system," initially established by Ferdinand de Saussure in his Course in General Linguistics, which occupies a predominant position in sructuralist criticism.Secondly, it looks at how structuralist literary criticism borrows the principle of digging various levels of structures from structural linguistics; and thirdly, how the typical notion of relations in structural linguistics is also widely used in structuralist literary analysis.By probing into the linguistic roots of structuralist criticism, this paper aims to clarify the cause of the failure of structuralist criticism.