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Page 126
description claims to be objective (by revealing structures that exist within the work), the structures which are brought to light are those that seem relevant only if we consider the work from a certain point of view ideologically overcoded. In this way any examination of the semiotic structures of the work becomes ipso facto the corroboration of both historical and sociological hypothesesand this happens even when the critic neither knows it is happening nor wants it to. It is better, then, to be aware of it, in order to correct as far as possible the distortion produced by the angle of perspective and to take the greatest possible advantage of such distortion as cannot be corrected.
So the structural analysis of the work describes a circular motion apparently typical of all research into acts of communication. 2 The method is scientific insofar as it admits this conditioning of the research, instead of ignoring it, and insofar as it gives it a critical basis and uses it as an opportunity for a better understanding of the work.
Once these basic principles of the method to be employed have been admitted, the description of the structures of the work shows itself to be one of the most rewarding ways in which to bring out the connections between a work and its sociohistorical context. In other words, it appears highly desirable that any sociological study of literature worthy of the name should resort to semiotics for its corroboration. The circular character of our method consists in moving then from the external social context to the internal structural context of the work under analysis, in building up the description of both contexts (or of other facts which play a part in the interpretation) by using uniform instruments of definition in each case and in revealing, next, structural correspondences between the co-text of the work, its sociohistorical context, and any other contexts which may come under examination. Thus one perceives that the way in which the work 'reflects' the social context, if we may be allowed once again to use the ambiguous category of 'reflection', may be characterized in structural terms, by building up complementary systems (or series) which, since it was possible to describe them by homogeneous means, appear structurally homologous.
The investigation will be to reveal correspondences and not causal relations. This does not mean that causal relations should not be introduced in a historical examination of wider scope; but, at this stage of the research, it would be inappropriate and rash to demonstrate them. Our examination is only to bring out parallelisms between the ideological and the rhetorical aspects of a given literary work.3
The above details of a method of analysis may be illustrated by the results of a study of the narrative structures of Les Mystères de Paris by Eugene Sue. In the pages that follow, we shall isolate three "series," or "systems," which play a part in the work: (i) the author's ideology;

 
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