Sturcturalism

My problem with structuralism (and bear with me, because I'm writing this as I read instead of as a reflection on the chapter later on) is that it rejects the idea of individual works as groundbreaking or bringers of change. If you only view a literary work in terms of what it tells you about the context in which it was written then you never have the tools with which to observe context as it changes. Something radical or insightful or incendiary can only be viewed as first deviant and then normal but never as inspiring mass change.

Problem #2 with structuralism: it assumes a definite truth. BT includes phrases such as that the work "does not make sense" or "cannot be understood" outside of the larger context, but this is going with the assumption that the author had a definite purpose when writing the work and that meaning is given to the work by the author (or god, fate, truth, some higher external power) and that meaning is not "jointly constructed by reader and writer", as critical theory states. If meaning is always outside then couldn't we also draw structurally based conclusisions around the context that we impose upon the text when we read it?

I know that that isn't the point of literary criticism, so let's look at this from a different angle. The text states that literary works do not make sense unless you look at them from the most abstract contextual view. This conclusion is incorrect. It's human nature to extrapolate meaning beyond the given and to warp what we interpret into social norms that we understand. Some texts count on these properties. First person narratives or texts that exclude context and description outside of dialogue count on these qualitites in order to be understood (The Sound and the Fury and A Farewell to Arms come to mind, but that's probably because I like them so much). So if books frequently depend on our ability to understand beyond our means, basing a form of literary analysis around the idea that you cannot understand this without the greater context seems a little off to me. It glorifies the author's intentions while at the same time pretending that the author has little to no autonomy.