The Poverty of Structuralism

A study of structuralist theory from Saussure to the British cultural theorists of the 1970s and 80s. The book argues that the structuralist model of language was inadequate to account for the actual structures and functioning of language, let alone those of literature and society.

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The Poverty of Structuralism is the first in a sequence of volumes which examine in turn the basic ideas of Saussure, Marx and Freud, and analyse the way in which they have been developed and applied to art, culture and modern textual theory. The text offers a critical introduction to the structuralist foundations of modern literary theory. It gives an account of the way such foundations have been developed, twisted and distorted to become part of the language that contemporary literary and cultural theoreticians use. It also addresses some of the fundamental issues about language and society that are presupposed by the often difficult language of modern literary and cultural theory.