ABSTRACT
Jonathan Culler’s On deconstruction says “the distinction between structuralism and post-structuralism is highly unreliable”; the purpose of this chapter is to render it less so, first by a review of theories of language, then by working through a specific application of classic structuralism in Umberto Eco’s analysis of the James Bond novels. The distinction between signifier and signified is a real one. Umberto Eco's essay on the James Bond novels, "The narrative structure in Fleming", was published in England in 1966 at the height of structuralism's esteem. The narrative machine needs M to start Bond on the road of duty leading to the second opposition. So, beneath the apparent surface of the Bond novels a structuralist analysis uncovers their real source and origin, an essence generated by the permutation of opposed terms, especially the crucial four: Bond, M, Villain, Woman. Eco’s analysis is intelligent, flexible, useful, and by no means doctrinaire.
