Structuralism and the Internet

This recent semester, my last semester of undergraduate school, I finally took our Literary Criticism class. In addition to being required for my major, was also being taught by one of my favorite professors. I found it quite interesting. We talked about the very foundations of how literary scholars examine texts. I had a slight advantage, as I had already taken Biblical Criticism the year before, and some of the concepts were either similar, or the same ideas shared between the two fields. So, besides an academic review of classes I've taken, what does this mean to you, the reader?

Well, one school of literary criticism that we looked at was called "structuralism." This school looks at the little things, like character types, plot devices and location variants. For example, across many genres and eras, there is the idea of the mystical, powerful sword. The purpose of the sword varies across the works. In Arthurian legends, there is Excalibur. In Lord of the Rings, Andúril is wielded by Aragorn. The Legend of Zelda features the Master Sword wielded by Link. In these examples, the sword is often chosen by the weapon itself: Link and Arthur are specifically picked to wield the sword and bring stability to the realm. Arthur and Aragorn are kings, of England and Gondor, respectively. Sometimes, the connections drawn are more tenuous than this: the idea is not to straight-jacket different works together. Rather, structuralism seeks to find things, often cool things, that different stories share in common.

Where does the "Internet" of "Structuralism and the Internet" play into all of this? First of all, the internet is full of lists. Top 10 this, 35 things of that, 14 secret thoses. In addition to the risk of too much plot summary, structuralist criticism can also fall into the pitfall of over-listing. It would be interesting, but nearly meaningless in itself, to create a list of silent, brooding protagonists featured in movies and video games. It is not enough to merely list them. We must show why it's important, and if it means anything important.

The second point is that the internet often gets structural criticism right. The best website for this is TV Tropes. They feature any genre and media that could be though of, even including a category for "Real Life." Because of the extensive connections that each page features, it is quite easy to get stuck in a loop of read-click-read-click on the site. TV Tropes shows that despite the efforts of Post-structuralism and post-modernist criticism, structuralist ideas still live on, and thrive.

For me, structuralism is an enjoyable form of literary criticism. It is almost universal in its use: I can talk about TV shows, novels and video games, comparing various aspects of their plots and characters. Sometimes, I can even trace the origin and development of a particular trope, such as zombies that eat brains. The development of that type of "creature" actually had most of its development in the recent decades. But, that's another topic for another day. I actually got to do this form of criticism extensively, when I wrote a nifty structuralist paper on the JRPG, Final Fantasy VII. True, I may have gone over the upper limit by double, by I really enjoyed writing the paper.

Because this form of criticism is relatively easy to do, look forward to actual criticism at some point. Maybe. We'll see.

Anyway! Structuralist criticism is cool!

The End