On Culler's Structuralist Poetics

In the pluralistic development of western literary arena in the 20th century, Jonathan Culler's structuralist poetics, regarding literary competence as the core, claims post-structuralism trend from structuralism to deconstructionism in the perspective of the readers. By critical inheritance from structuralism Culler developed deconstructionism greatly inputting the two on the same level to set up an organic system. This paper aims to inspect Culler's main invention in the background of the 20th century western literature critics to probe the basic spirit of communication of different critic schools. The paper firstly locates Culler's position in structuralism from micro-aspect and macro-aspect and then from two levels of the subject construction and literature definition focuses on the foundation of Culler's poetics in aspects of linguistic procedure and institutional theory to find the theory premise of Culler's poetics. Thus we point out the core of Culler's poetics of literary competence embodied from theory implication and text presentation and define the intension and extension of literary competence to unfold its form and function pattern. The paper advances to analyze the communication between structure and deconstructionism from micro text and macro activities with the emphasis on the significance and repetition to explore the moment and the approaches of the communication. In the conclusion part, the paper advocates to use for reference Culler's poetics by analyzing the enlightenment from Culler on our subject construction of literature and art.