A Study of William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night from A Post-Structuralist Perspective

Abstract

    This study re-examines William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (1601) through the analytical lens of post-structuralist theory, with particular attention to Jacques Derrida’s notion of différance and Terry Eagleton’s reflections on the instability of meaning. By situating Twelfth Night within the dynamics of signification, the research argues that the play dramatizes the endless deferral of meaning through disguise, language play, and the dissolution of fixed identity. The analysis demonstrates that concepts such as love, selfhood, and sanity in Shakespeare’s comedy are never fully present but continually displaced by competing signifiers. Through close reading and theoretical interpretation, the paper reveals how linguistic slippage and semantic absence destabilize the metaphysics of presence that traditional readings often assume. Ultimately, the study contributes to contemporary Shakespearean criticism by illustrating how post-structuralist theory opens new interpretive possibilities for canonical texts and foregrounds the productive tension between meaning and its perpetual deferral.