ABSTRACT
Although, in one sense, literature is created through the use of words, it is not enough to analyse literary texts at the level of words only. After all, there are not many instances where single words have stand-alone meaning. ‘Hello’, ‘goodbye’ are a couple of possible examples, but even these do not mean much without a more specific context; we need more than words to create meanings. In this chapter you will be shown how to identify the various ways in which texts have shape and patterns which contribute to their overall meanings In this chapter and those which follow, the word ‘structure’ will be used to describe the processes by which texts are built. In using the phrase ‘the way texts are built’ there are two metaphors at work, and they have a lot in common. The word ‘text’ comes from the whole notion of textiles, in other words of weaving together. A written text is something that a writer has woven together: a written text is something for you to unpick in your analysis. (This idea of text has many other common uses: we lose the thread, we unravel meanings, readers/authors tie up the loose ends, we look at the material.) The second metaphor, which, like the idea of text has become so embedded in our language that we barely recognise it as a metaphor at all is the idea that texts have been built, that they are structures. In a very literal sense to say that texts have structure is to use a mixed metaphor, because it is using ideas of weaving and building at the same time, but because the metaphorical origins have faded, we don’t really notice. Instead we are more likely to see that weaving and building have in common the idea that something is not only created, but that it is created to a design. The fabric may be colourful, the building may be ornate, but however distinctive they look, they have been created in an organised way. So, if we pursue the metaphor of building further, we can say that a building has external features such as overall shape and design which indicate what sort of building it is, and what purpose we expect it to fulfil. A school, for example, will be recognisable from the outside, partly because of the way it advertises itself and partly because it will have recognisable external features. Go inside the school and its internal features such as classrooms and offices will confirm the impression. In the same way, literary texts have some aspects to do with the whole text, what it looks like from the outside, and other aspects to do with the way the separate parts hold together, what it looks like from the inside.
