The Moscow-Tartu school (MTS) is a group of Soviet linguists (including Valerii Ivanov, Isaak Revzin, Vladimir Toporov), folklorists (Eleazar Meletinskij, Dmitri Segal), Orientalists (Aleksandr Piatigorskij, Boris Ogibenin), and literary scholars (including Jurij Levin, Jurij Lotman, Boris Uspenskij) who, since about… Read More ›
Semiotics
Performance Studies
Performance Studies is a new academic discipline, developed largely out of university departments of drama or of theatre studies, and driven mostly in USA, especially by Richard Schechner (b. 1934). Schechner was something of a polymath: theatre director with his… Read More ›
Key Theories of Louis Hjelmslev
The Danish linguist and semiotician, Louis Hjelmslev, was born in 1899 and died on 30 May 1965. Hjelmslev, who founded the Copenhagen Linguistic Circle, attempted to render more rigorous and clear Saussure’s general theory of language and semiotics. In particular, Hjelmslev… Read More ›
Key Theories of Emile Benveniste
Born in Aleppo in 1902, Emile Benveniste was professor of linguistics at the Colle’ge de France from 1937 to 1969, when he was forced to retire due to ill-health, tragically caused by aphasia. He died in 1976. After being educated… Read More ›
Roland Barthes as a Cultural Theorist
French literary critic, Roland Barthes (1915-1980) was a key figure both in the development of structuralism — in particular in the application of techniques derived from semiology to the analysis of everyday life and popular (as well as high) culture… Read More ›
Key Concepts of A.J. Greimas
A.J. Greimas‘ work has been an effort to analyse all forms of discourse. Greimas emphasizes the idea that language is an “assemblage of structures of signification” which implies that the language system cannot be “given” in advance but must be… Read More ›
C.S. Peirce and the Semiotics
C.S. Peirce worked on logic and semiotics (this latter term he translated from the Greek), frequently linking the two. He argued that signs are the vehicles for thought as well as the articulation of logical forms. Peirce differs from Saussure… Read More ›
Roman Jakobson’s Contribution to Structuralism and Semiotics
One of the most distinguished thinkers in linguistics, philology and aesthetics, Jakobson was responsible for the development of semiotics as a critical practice. Since his work is extremely wide-ranging in scope, Jakobson’s contribution to semiotics and structuralism alone are discussed… Read More ›
Gerard Genette and Structural Narratology
The most important of the structural narratologists, Gerard Genette, has argued for the autonomous nature of the literary text. Genette’s work has been of particular use to literary critics for his attempts to develop models of reading texts in a… Read More ›
Umberto Eco and the Semiotics
Eco proceeds from the Peircean assumption of “unlimited semiosis.” Though unlimited semiosis indicates that signs always refer to other signs (and that a text is open to infinite interpretations), Eco seeks a middle ground between univocal meaning and infinite meanings. For… Read More ›
Julia Kristeva and the Semanalysis
Kristeva first came into prominence for her work on Bakhtin Seeking to counter the “necrophilia”as (Kristeva called it) of phenomenology and structural linguistics, she suggested “semanalysis,” a portmanteau term derived from semiology (Saussure) and psychoanalysis (Freud) to address an element… Read More ›
Key Theories of Geoffrey Hartman
Hartman advocates the use of incomplete references, and seeks a critical language that is highly figurative and critical at the same time. His is a rich in eccentric style of writing that is self-conscious and constantly calls attention to the… Read More ›
Roland Barthes’ Concept of Death of the Author
Roland Barthes’ Death of the Author (1968) plays a pioneering role in contemporary theory as it encapsulates certain key ideas of Poststructuralist theory and also marks Barthes’ transition from structuralism to poststructuralism. The title itself, in a rhetorical way announces… Read More ›