As always, I found Bressler's literary criticism to be very intriguing. I will begin this reaction by briefly discussing modernity. Many historians view modernism as synonymous with the Enlightenment. It is the belief that reason is man's best guide to life, and that science could lead to "a new promised land." Postmodernism is what came out of modernity, and is essentially the rejection of modernity. With postmodernism, there is no absolute truth. Truth is a relative thing that depends on the nature and cultural and/or social influences in a person's life. I both agree and disagree with this. I believe that there can be absolute truths, but not all truth is certain and has the capability of varying. I agree with the belief that the reader creates his/her subjective picture of reality.
The term structuralism was created by the Russian Formalist Roman Jakobson. Structuralism offers the scientific view of how meaning can be achieved in literary works. A chief characteristic the focus on the structure of a literary text. Structuralists rely on the use of semiotics, which is the study of signs and systems. Claude Lévi-Strauss, a French anthropologist, influenced the structuralist approach immensely. Both structuralism and postmodernism are approaches that have been widely used to analyze literary works for years. I found both to be interesting and they perhaps will change the way I approach literary text from now on.
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