{"title":"Structures All the Way Down: Literary Methods and the Detail","authors":"C. Levine","doi":"10.1215/00267929-10335715","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\n This essay makes the case that most methods in literary studies explicitly privilege the detail but covertly depend on structures. The article turns to structuralism, specifically to the debate between Vladimir Propp and Claude Lévi-Strauss about the role of the detail, for a method that keeps structures in view, even while focusing on details. Suggesting that structuralist methods could usefully reshape the teaching of literature now, the essay reads two novels that both depend on and depart from traditional fairy-tale patterns: Jane Yolen’s Briar Rose (1992) and Helen Oyeyemi’s Boy, Snow, Bird (2014).","PeriodicalId":44947,"journal":{"name":"MODERN LANGUAGE QUARTERLY","volume":"248 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2023-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"MODERN LANGUAGE QUARTERLY","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00267929-10335715","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This essay makes the case that most methods in literary studies explicitly privilege the detail but covertly depend on structures. The article turns to structuralism, specifically to the debate between Vladimir Propp and Claude Lévi-Strauss about the role of the detail, for a method that keeps structures in view, even while focusing on details. Suggesting that structuralist methods could usefully reshape the teaching of literature now, the essay reads two novels that both depend on and depart from traditional fairy-tale patterns: Jane Yolen’s Briar Rose (1992) and Helen Oyeyemi’s Boy, Snow, Bird (2014).
期刊介绍：
MLQ focuses on change, both in literary practice and within the profession of literature itself. The journal is open to essays on literary change from the Middle Ages to the present and welcomes theoretical reflections on the relationship of literary change or historicism to feminism, ethnic studies, cultural materialism, discourse analysis, and all other forms of representation and cultural critique. Seeing texts as the depictions, agents, and vehicles of change, MLQ targets literature as a commanding and vital force.
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