Front cover of the first edition

The Structure of Literature is a 1954 book of literary criticism by Paul Goodman, the published version of his doctoral dissertation. It proposes a mode of formal literary analysis in which Goodman defines a formal structure within an isolated literary work, finds how parts of the work interact with each other to form a whole, and uses those definitions to study other works. He analyzes multiple literary works as examples with close reading and genre discussion. Goodman finished his dissertation in 1940, but took 14 years to publish it. In mixed reviews, critics described the book as falling short of its aims; engaging psychological insight and incisive asides were mired in glaring style issues and jargon that made passages impenetrable or obscured his argument. Though Goodman contributed to the development of the Chicago School of Aristotelian formal literary criticism, he neither received wide academic recognition for his dissertation nor was his method accepted by his field. ( Full article...)

• ...that the Roman de Fergus is the earliest piece of non- Celtic vernacular literature to have survived from Scotland?
• ...that the Philharmonia Hungarica made the first complete recording of Haydn's symphonies, was an orchestra founded by Hungarian exiles and funded by the West German government during the Cold War?
• ...that the dachas of the Russian poets Boris Pasternak, Korney Chukovsky, and Bulat Okudzhava in the village of Peredelkino near Moscow are open to the public as memorial houses?
• ...that an aerosani is a type of air-powered, armoured snowmobile, which was used for transport, reconnaissance, and raiding by the Red Army in the Winter War and the Second World War?
• ...that a push–pull converter is a type of DC-to-DC converter that uses a transformer to step the voltage of a DC power supply?
• ...that the Chicana artist Yolanda Lopez became famous with the painting "Virgen de Guadalupe", which represents Lopez's personal investigation into Virgen de Guadalupe's status in Mexican society?

Kyren Wilson

• Kyren Wilson (pictured) wins the World Snooker Championship.
• In horse racing, Mystik Dan wins the Kentucky Derby.
• Following the Solomon Islands general election, Jeremiah Manele becomes the prime minister.
• Acting prime minister of Haiti Ariel Henry resigns, and the Transitional Presidential Council is sworn in.
• NASA announces that the Voyager 1 space probe is sending readable data for the first time in five months.

May 7

Maximilien Robespierre

• 1487 – Granada War: Forces of Aragon and Castile began a siege of Málaga, a Muslim city in the south of the Iberian Peninsula.
• 1794 – French Revolution: Maximilien Robespierre (pictured) established the Cult of the Supreme Being as the new state religion of the French First Republic.
• 1798 – War of the First Coalition: A British garrison repelled a French attack on the Îles Saint-Marcouf off the Normandy coast, inflicting heavy losses.
• 1937 – Employees at Fleischer Studios in New York City went on strike in the animation industry's first major labor strike.
• 1946 – Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita founded the telecommunications corporation Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo, later renamed Sony.