How did structuralism and poststructuralism influence literary theory?

Structuralism and poststructuralism fundamentally transformed literary criticism by shifting the focus from the author's intent to the mechanics of language and meaning.

Structuralism

Emerging in the 1950s, structuralism applied the linguistic theories of Ferdinand de Saussure to analyze cultural phenomena as systems of signs. It proposed that texts should be understood not in isolation, but through their relationships to the organized structures and codes within which they exist. This approach encouraged critics to develop "metalanguages" to describe these systems, treating literature as a discourse that constitutes both writers and readers.123

Poststructuralism

Poststructuralism arose in the late 1960s as a critique of structuralist scientific detachment. It posits that language is not a transparent medium for "truth" but a self-referential code. Through deconstruction, critics like Jacques Derrida challenged the idea of self-contained artifacts, instead viewing texts as sites of intractable conflict between competing meanings. This movement shifted literary studies toward examining how texts interact with broader discourses and how they implicitly critique the very categories used to analyze them.12