Analyze “the Hairy Ape” from Marxism and Structuralism
Autor: Harmin Akter • April 8, 2016 • Research Paper • 8,134 Words (33 Pages) • 1,198 Views
Marxism and structuralism 1
Term Paper
On
Analyze “The Hairy Ape” from Marxism and structuralism
theoretical point of view.
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles between the
oppressed and the oppressing”, according to Karl Marx. Political evolution involves “feudalism”
which is natural and it ultimately leads to “bourgeois capitalism” to “socialism” and at last to
“utopian communism”. (Michael Delahoyde, n.d.). The privileged bourgeoisie rely on the
proletariat . As class struggle and materialism are reflected in literature so it is obvious that
Marxist normally view literature "not as works created in accordance with timeless artistic
criteria, but as 'products' of the economic and ideological determinants specific to that era"
(Abrams, p.149). Marxist theory has tremendously influenced as many as scholars like Georg
Lukacs, Bertolt Brecht, Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Lucien Goldmann,
Louis Althusser, Friedric Jameson, Terry Eagleton (Selden, Widdowson &Brooker 2005). Some
new school of thoughts had emerged by taking the notion of Marxist theory and those are Soviet
Socialist Realism, The Frankfurt School, Structuralist Marxism and New Left Marxism (Selden
et al,2005). Along with Marxist theory there is another theory that is structuralism, which I want
to include here. As, for my term paper I am going to follow these two theoretical approaches. In
structuralism “the author is ‘dead’ and that literary discourse has no truth function (Selden et al,
2005. p.62). In Course in General Linguistics (1915), Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure has
presented a science that he called "semiology" which is more commonly known as semiotics.
Langue, parole, signifier, signified, structuralist narratology, metaphor and metonymy,
...