This book, Literary Theory: From Formalism to Structuralism and Beyond, introduces major approaches to literary criticism through a sustained examination of these questions. It begins with New Criticism and its emphasis on the literary work as an autonomous structure. Particular attention is given to form, content, organic unity, aesthetic value, close reading, and the relationship between literary structure and meaning. The discussion also considers the limitations of an exclusively text-centered conception, especially its tendency to separate literature from historical, social, and ideological contexts.
Russian Formalism extends the text-oriented perspective by placing literariness at the center of inquiry. Concepts such as ostranenie or defamiliarization, the poetic function, and the distinction between fabula and syuzhet demonstrate how literary language and narrative organization transform ordinary perception. Structuralism subsequently shifts attention from individual works toward the systems, conventions, relations, and codes that make literary meaning possible. Its foundations in Saussurean linguistics and its development through figures such as Jakobson, Propp, Barthes, Greimas, and Todorov reveal literature as a system of signs and relations.
