Structuralism is an intellectual movement which began in France in the 1950s and is first seen in the work of the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss (1908-?) and the literary critic Roland Barthes (1915-1980). It is difficult to boil structuralism down to a single 'bottom-line' proposition, but if forced to do so I would say that its essence is the belief that “…things cannot be understood in isolation - they have to be seen in the context of the larger structures they are part of” Hence the term is described as ‘structuralism’. Structuralism was imported into Britain mainly in the 1970sand attained widespread influence, and even notoriety, throughout the 1980s. If we are confronted with Keats’Ode on a Grecian Urn, as structuralists we must claim that it can only be understood if we first have a clear notion of the genre which it parodies andsubverts. In the case of Keats’ poem the relevant genre is the ‘Ode’, one kind of lyric poem in which the speaker addresses
Marxist criticism is an approach of literary criticism based on the political and economic theories of Karl Marx (1818-1883), a German philosopher, and his fellow-thinker Friedrich Engels (1820-1895), a German sociologist. It interprets literary work asboth a reflection and a product of economic conflict between the social classes. The basic assumption of this criticism is that those who control the economy of the society and also control and influence its culture and intellectual products. This criticism roots in the analysis of Karl Marx’s Base Structure/ Superstructure Model, Materialistic interpretation of History (Dialectic Materialism), Ideology, Hegemony etc . Now we will try to have a brief look at, how it develops, what is the basic concept of itand how it is related to literature in our following discussion. To define the term “Marxist criticism” is very difficult as Marx and Engels themselves did not put forward any comprehensive theory of literature.“They th