Explain French Structuarlism's contribution to literay theory.

French structuralism no longer enjoys the widespread
popularity (among critics, intellectuals, etc.) that it enjoyed in the 1960s, but it has
made important contributions to literary
theory.

Structuralism drew attention both to patterns
within texts and to similarities between texts, so one contribution would probably be a
closer attention to narrative structures and genres of literary works. New Criticism,
which ruled almost uncontested into the 1950s as the primary form of literary criticism,
has probably always been better suited to poetry than to prose and viewed texts in
isolation. Structuralism works very well with prose, by contrast, and viewed texts in
relation to other texts.

Aside from serving as a counter to
New Criticism, one of the main contributions that I would identify is the understanding
that a structure or pattern (one based on the structure of language) can be uncovered in
any sort of system, not just literary texts. The structuralists opened the door wide on
what can be interpreted: advertisements, architecture, fairy tales, practices of food
preparation, etc. Anything and everything is now a “text” that needs to be read and
critiqued.

Structuralism also, obviously, made
post-structuralism and deconstruction possible. As early as the later 1960s, many of
those same critics and intellectuals who had previously embraced the structuralist
belief that a final “truth” could be uncovered through extended analysis of a system
(Roland Barthes is a great example!) converted to a poststructuralist views of “truth”
as provisional or illusory.

The Wikipedia article (see the
link below) gives a good overview. Wikipedia is an interesting and uneven source, so use
it (and all sources, I suppose!) with some caution, but the entry on structuralism
looks accurate to me.