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Literature vocabulary · Criticism and Analysis

Deconstruction

Meaning in literature, with examples

nounAdvanced term

In literature, deconstruction means: Reading that examines tensions and contradictions which unsettle a text's apparent oppositions and meanings.

In Turkish: yapısöküm

How it is used

Use to examine how a text unsettles its own distinctions; it does not mean simply rejecting all meaning.

Example sentences

  1. The deconstruction shows how the poem's praise of purity depends on images of mixture.

    The text needs the very idea it appears to exclude.

  2. Our deconstruction of the ending questions the clear division between freedom and obedience.

    Details in the ending make the apparent opposition less stable.

Common collocations

  • a deconstruction of
  • deconstruction and literary theory
  • paradoxA statement or situation that seems self-contradictory or absurd but turns out to express a deeper truth, as in 'less is more'.
  • literary theoryThe study of the ideas and methods used to read and interpret literature, such as structuralism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, feminism and postcolonial theory.

More terms: Criticism and Analysis

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