Critical Reading Perspectives

1. Critical Reading Perspectives …. Cuz there’s never just one

2. Feminist • Read in terms of the female identity • Concerned with: • social & cultural attitudes towards women • Issues arising from male or female narrative • Patriarchy or male hegemony

3. Reader-response • Read in terms of the individual & how they creates meaning • Concerned with: • reader’s cultural values & how attitudes lead to assumptions about characters etc • How reader “fill gaps” that are either ambiguous or contradictory

4. Race/post colonial • Read in terms of representation of ethnicity • Concerned with: • how race & injustice are dealt with • Esp; written or set in colonial times • Power ( hegemony) is often a common motif • Highlights western attitudes toward nationality & ethnicity • Assumptions & paradigms expressed implicitly or explicitly by author and/or characters

5. Genre • Read in terms of the type of genre • Fiction, non-fiction, Detective, Thriller, Comic, Tragedy • Concerned with: • how text embodies characteristics & conventions associated with particular genre

6. Cultural/historical • Read in terms of how it reveals culture & ideologies of the time • Concerned with: • facts or opinion about the time period • Understanding that texts no “stand alone” but read with historical understanding

7. Structuralist • Read in terms of how novel put together & how ideas are put together • Concerned with: • How does construction represents author’s view of the world • diction, form, paradox, motifs, patterns

8. Marxist • Read in terms of exploringissues of social class and power, especially the treatment of working class • Concerned with: • political, cultural, and social contexts

9. Psychoanalytic • Read in terms of exploring how humans think, react • Concerned with: • Human behavior • Human behavior as it applies to social & cultural- ethical attitudes • Human psychology, • internal & external conflicts within the characters

10. The End