Abstract :
According to the Chamber s dictionary, Structuralism is defined as The study of unconscious, underlying patterns in thought, behavior, social organization. and structural linguistics is the study of language in terms of the interrelations of its basic phonological, morphological, and semantic units. (1993: 1710)Structuralism, as the term suggests is concerned with structures and especially it deals with the general law that govern these basic structures or in the words of Terry Eagleton: Structuralism in general is an attempt to apply this linguistic theory to objects and activities other than language itself (Eagleton 1998: 84)It is a method to analyze the literary texts and interpret them on the basis of their underlying structures. It tells all written texts have the same knitting/fabrication patterns. The beauty of this approach is that it combines extreme aestheticism with a scientificity, and maintains literature as an imaginary alternative to modern society.Hence the novelty value of the literary text is not found according to the structuralistic point of view. This article gives a definition, general concept, historical background (gradual progression) and a brief review of structuralism in the field of psychology, anthropology and mathematics leading to the literary structuralism which flourished in 1960s, in the light of the views of the founder of modern literary structural linguistics, Ferdinand De Saussure. It is an attempt to familiarize the readers of this article (especially the students at graduate level) with the term Structuralism and some of its prominent features so that they should be able to interpret the literary texts logically and scientifically
