Questions: Structuralist Deep Structure and Underlying Systems

Question 1

Propp analyzed 100 Russian folktales and found 31 narrative functions appearing in a fixed sequence. What does this finding demonstrate?

• A. Russian folktales were composed by a single author who imposed a consistent structure across all tales
• B. Beneath enormous surface variation in characters, settings, and events, there is an invariant deep structure — a narrative grammar — that generates all the tales
• C. Folktales are less sophisticated than other literary forms because they recycle the same structural elements
• D. Propp's 31 functions describe conscious compositional rules that storytellers deliberately follow

Answer: (B)

Propp's method exemplifies the structuralist move: abstract away from surface content (the specific hero's name, the magical object, the kingdom) to reveal the combinatorial system that generates all possible instances. The 31 functions are not consciously followed rules (option D) — they are features of the deep structure that storytellers reproduce without awareness, just as speakers follow grammatical rules without being able to state them. The finding implies that narrative form has its own grammar independent of cultural surface content. The fact that surface variation is enormous while deep structure is invariant is precisely the point of the analysis.

Question 2

A student argues that a Greek myth's significance lies in the specific gods invoked, the named heroes, and the local geography of the story. How would a structuralist like Lévi-Strauss respond?

• A. The student is right — cultural and historical specificity is what makes each myth meaningful and worthy of analysis
• B. The myth's deeper meaning lies in the binary oppositions (nature/culture, raw/cooked, human/divine) that the surface narrative processes and attempts to resolve — the specific content is secondary
• C. Structuralism and cultural analysis are equally valid interpretive approaches that complement each other
• D. Myths have no meaning — they are purely entertainment whose apparent significance is a reader projection

Answer: (B)

Lévi-Strauss's structuralist analysis of myth shifts the critical question from 'what does this myth mean?' to 'what deep structural problem does this myth's form work through?' Myths across cultures are, in this view, transformations of underlying sets of binary oppositions — structural contradictions that culture must process. The specific heroes, gods, and geography are the myth's surface clothing; the binary structure is its deep logic. This is a radical departure from hermeneutic approaches that treat cultural specificity as primary. Note that option A represents the approach structuralism explicitly challenges.

Question 3

In structuralist literary analysis, a work's meaning is primarily determined by the author's intentions and the historical context in which it was produced.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

Structuralism explicitly brackets authorial intention as irrelevant to literary meaning — this is one of its most radical and controversial claims. Following Saussure's insight that meaning is relational (arising from differences within a system), structuralism holds that a literary element means what it means through its position in a structural system of relationships, not because an author willed it to mean that. The critic's task is to map the system, not to reconstruct the author's mind or historical situation. This move anticipates Barthes's later proclamation of 'the death of the author' — structuralism prepares the theoretical ground for it.

Question 4

The structuralist distinction between surface structure and deep structure implies that radically different surface narratives can be expressions of the same underlying structural pattern.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: True

This is the direct consequence of structuralism's method and its most striking empirical claim. Propp demonstrated it for folktales: 100 tales with enormously different surface content all instantiate the same 31-function grammar. Lévi-Strauss extended the claim to myths across unrelated cultures. If meaning arises from structural relationships rather than surface content, then the same deep structure can be 'dressed' in radically different surface materials. The corollary is equally important: texts that look superficially similar may instantiate different deep structures. Surface appearance is not a reliable guide to structural identity.

Question 5

What does structuralism mean by saying that literary meaning is 'relational, not intrinsic,' and what follows from this for how a critic should analyze a text?

Model answer: Meaning is relational in the Saussurean sense: no element of a system has meaning in isolation — it means what it means only through its differences from every other element in the system. Just as 'cat' means what it means partly because it is not 'bat,' 'rat,' or 'cap,' a character like the 'villain' means what they mean through their structural opposition to the 'hero,' not through any inherent properties. The same character could be a villain or a helper depending on their position in the structure. What follows methodologically is that the critic should not analyze individual elements in isolation — asking 'what does this symbol mean?' — but should map the full system of relationships in which elements acquire meaning. The correct analytical question is: what structural position does this element occupy, and how does its meaning emerge from its contrasts and relations with other positions in the system?

This relational account of meaning is the Saussurean inheritance that gives structuralism its distinctive method and its controversial implications. If meaning is positional, then the same surface content can mean different things in different structural contexts, and apparently different content can mean the same thing in identical structural positions. The system, not the element, is the primary unit of analysis.