In its most specific form, deconstruction is a mode of philosophical and literary analysis, derived from the work of French philosopher, Jacques Derrida, which questions the most basic philosophical categories or concepts. A major focus of Deconstruction has been the traditional binary oppositions that have structured Western thought since the time of the Greeks: for example, the oppositions between inside and outside, mind and body, literal and metaphorical, speech and writing, presence and absence, nature and culture, intelligible and sensible, form and meaning. Each of these oppositions is...

A work of technical skill as well as literary merit, Structuralist Poetics was awarded the 1975 James Russell Lowell Prize of the Modern Language Association. It was during the writing of this book that Culler developed his now famous and complex theory of poetics and narrative, which he makes clear within these pages. The book itself combines a survey of structuralist literary criticism with a discussion about how English and American criticism might benefit from its lessons. Now reissued as a Routledge Classic with a new introduction from the author, Structuralist Poetics remains an...