Structuralism is one of the first theories studied in the course. The point of this critical theory is look at the general framework of works of literature. However, the comprehension of the underlying framework, or structure, of the essay is not the entire purpose of the theory. It is more relevant to discover what this underlying structure says about concepts and ideas that go beyond the work. For example, many pieces of literature seem to be difficult to understand for no reason at all. So when looking at a difficult work, one could say that the underlying structure is the notion that the world can be very difficult to understand, and connecting life to literature can help us better understand both. Structuralism is also concerned with the notion of how similar all works are to works written previously. With these similarities, what do they say about the themes they represent? While it may be important to look at the true structure of a work, do we then ask too much of a work for thematic unity between other works? Can a work stand as a work by itself, or must it be connected to an underlying structure? Additionally, if a work does not have obvious thematic unity, does that detract from it’s quality?

Northrop Frye, an important theorist of Structuralism, theorizes that myths, of which many current pieces of literature are based off of, follow only four main structures: comedy, tragedy, romance, and irony/satire. Interestingly enough, is this not how many of our works today are still structured? In tracing works back to these four structures, we can better relate them to current pieces and then are able to see how they go beyond the words on the page.