C:HERYL GLENN

The Pennsylvania State IJniversity

LOREjr'TA: GRA'Y,

Centl[al Washingtom University

=J"HQIVISON

*'WADSWORTH

398 Writing to Interpret Literature

Writing a paper about a literary work usually requires you to foc4S onthe work itself and to demonstrate that you have read it carefully;-aprocess known as close reading. (Compare close reading with readingrhetorically; see chapter 2.) Through close reading, you can offer aminterpretation, an explanation of what you see in a work. An interpre-tation can be shaped by your personal response to what you have read,a specific type of literary theory, or the views of other readers, whomyou wish to support or challenge.

Literary theory, the scholarly discussion of how the nature andfunction of literature can be determined, ranges from approaches thatfocus almost exclusively on the text itself (its language and structure) noapproaches that show how the text relates to author, reader, language,society, culture, economics, or history. Familiarity with literary theoryenriches your reading of literature as well as your understanding of thebooks and essays about literature that you will discover when you do re-search (see chapter 9). Literary theory can also help you decide how youwant to focus your writing about literature.

Although the most popular theoretical approaches to literature overlapsomewhat, each has a differc:rntprimary focus: the reader, some feature ofthe social or cultural context, the text itself, or the author or_characters. In-terpreting literature involves a responsible reliance on one or,more. of theseapproaches-for whatever your interpretation, the text should support it.

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According to reader-response theory, re.ad~rs constl"U.ct meanmg asthey read and interact with the elements within a text, ':lth eac~. readerbringing something different (intellectu~ v~lues and life expenenc~~)to the text on every reading. Thus, meal11ng IS not fixed on the page, Itdepends on what each reader brings to the page. Furthermore, the samereader can have different responses to the same literary wO.rk whenrereading it after a number of years: a father of teenage~s mighr findGwendolyn Brooks's "we real cool" more disturbing than It had seemedwhen he first read it in high school. Although a. reader-responseapproach to literature encourages diverse interpret:tlo~~, yo~ can~otsimply say, "Well, that's what this work means to m.e or Thats my ill-

rerpretation." You must demon~trate to y~ur audience how each ele-ment of the work supports your mterpretatlon.

(2) Both femi";ist and gender-based literary theories focus onIssues related to gender and sexuality.

.I'he significance of sex, gender,or sexual orientation within aparticular social context is the in-terpretive focus of feminist andgender-based literary theories.These theories enable a reader toanalyze the ways in which a work(through its characters, theme, orplot) promotes or challenges theprevailing intellectual or c~tw:al J

assumptions of its day regarding IS- Like the early suffragists, many feminist literarysues related to gender and sexuality, critics focus on prevailing social and cultural (

h d ul constraints affecting women.including.patriarc yan comp -sory heterosexuality. For instance, , _ _Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence compares two upper-class mne-teenth-centuty women in terms of the spe~~c so~i~ pr~sures that s_hapedand constricted their lives and loves. A feminisr WtIC .mlght e~pnaslZe theoppression of these women and the repressio~. of ~eu sexuality. On read-ing Henry James's The Bostonians, another cnnc, USInga ge~der-b~ed a~-proach, might focus on the positive feat~res'of the domestic relatIons~l.pbetween the financially independent Olive and Verena. That same cnuc

400 [DilWriting to Interpret Literature

might also try to explain why Jake Barn .ALsoRisesbonds with Some men d i es ill Ernest Hemingway's The S'III

, an ISCOntemptuous of others. ;,.

(3) Race-based literary theo f 'race rel~tions. ry ocuses on issues related to. ';;' ,

A useful form of ~'ace-b d I' , . ,. . . ase iterary '€rlllcrsrn, critical race the f(if! f' .ory ocuses on. tbe sig-

n lcance.o ,race relanons (race, racism, andpower) within a specific .historical an:"d 'I

• • SOG:13• ' settl~g ~n order to. explain the expefie~cCl

~d lirel.ary productIOn of any people whosehIstory IS characterized b Ii . al ' .a d ~ . y po HIC ,socIal,~ psychologIcal oppression. Not onI d: 'this theoretical a h k y.. oes'. pproac see Out pre~i0usJyneglected lIterary works, but it also ill~'mi-nates the ways, in which race eth . . dth . bal ' ruClty"ane I~ ance of power inform many wOEks

PreVIOusly neglected works such as Z 'f~ederick Douglass's Narrative detailS Neale Hurston' Th 'E We ,I, orah!s ~ncou~ters with racism, both as a God. R d s '", :yes ere 'Watchingvtctim of SlaverY and as a fr~e man. d' U o.lpho Anayas Bless Me, Ultima,

.. , ~n, ,FrederIck Douglass's Narrative, whichter~' lives, have taken on con:~~~s~~'ate lIoW racism ~ffects the charac-years. A&ican American ll.t ,. a. ~ ~u tural value 111 the last twenty. ul' erary cntlclsm fo 1 h btic arly Successful in invigo . th ,r examp e, as een par-

writers, whose works can ber~I~g fi l~study o~great Mrican Americansider how literary dem f Ole u YapprecIated When readers ~on-b ems 0 some of the ks hy the social forces that help d d se Wor ave been informed

critical race theory is postc 1e .~;°thuce the~. Closely associated withl' h 0 Olllat eory, which tak' , 'ire ations ip of the colonized . h th I'. es Into account the

can direct at the dominant p WIt e co o~lzer and the challenge a tex.. Owers at a partlcul' dIl1ga drive toward the liberat' f ar time an place, assert-rad's Heart of Darkness ]ea~o~o ~p~~s1social groups.]?seph' Con-Robinso~ Crusoe and EMF ys s, z e argasso Sea, Daniel' De'foe'sproductively thr~ugh th~ 1 . °frster SAI P~ssageto India can all be reao

ens 0 pOStco orual 0eolJ-(4) Class-based literaTc' .. fOCuses on sOcioecono.rlic issues: ".0 explam the copflkt between literal' h

ter and a community . '. y c aracters or between a charac-or IllstltUtJon, class-based literary th d. eory raws

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n the work of Karl Marx, Terry Eagleton, and others who have ad-dJ'essed the implications of social hierarchies and the accompanying('COnomic tensions. These theorists argue that differenc~s in socioeco-nomic class-in the material conditions of daily life-divide people inprofoundly significant ways, more so than differences in race, erhnicity,culture, and gender, Thus, a class-based approach can be used to'X plain why Emma Bovary is unhappy, despite hft "good" (that is,financially advantageous) marriage, in Gustave Elaubert's Madame./fo'vary,why Bigger .Thomas gets thrown into such a co,nfused'ome.o,talSlate in Richard Wright's Native Son, or why a family Ibses its Iand-inJohn Steinbeck's The Grapeso/Wrath. I "

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~) T~~t-based literary theo~ focuses on the work itself.'.,' ,,"

Text-based literary theory demands concentration on the piece ofliterature itself; with this approach, only the use of'concrete, speci'fic ex-amples froin the.text validates an interpretation. The readef must paycareful attention to the elements within the literary ~ork..,,;-plot, charac-tcrs, setting, tone, dialogue, imagery, and so on~to evaluate their inter-action, overall effect, and meaning. Nothing more-than what is containedwithin the text itself='not information about the author's life orabouthis or her culture or society-is needed to understand and'appreciate the 'rext's unchanging meaning. Readers may change, but the meaning of therext does nbt. A close reading of the work is essential, then, in order toaccount for all of its particularities, including the ways in which the lan-guage and the structure fit within a specific literary genre.

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(6) Context~based literary theory focuses on the time and placein which a work was created.

• ',"'" 1 '.,' -', l

Context-b~ed literary theory con~iders the historical period duringwhich a work was written and the cultural and economic patterns thatprevailed during that period. For exampl~, recognizing t,hat WillaCather publish,ed My Antonia during World War I can help ac~ount forthe darker side of that novel about European immigrants' harsh life inthe American West; similarly, understanding that Arthur Miller wroteThe Crucible in·response to the acqjsations of the H()us.e,UI?-~Am~ricanActivities Committee in the 19?Oshelps explain why that playgener-ated so much excitement when it was fust produced. Critics who use acontext-based and class-based approach knoVY,nas cultural, st!ldiesconsider how a li,terary work inter~cts with eCOl1omic conditions,

402~.Ii!!!J Writing to Interpret Literature

soci?economic class~s, ~d ot~er. cultural artifacts (such as songs orfashion) from the period in which It was written.

(7) Psy.c~oanalytic theories focus on p~ychological factors affe.~ingthe wrltmg and the reading of literature.

By focusing on the psychological states of theauthor and the characters as well as the reader,psychoanalytic theories seek to explain hu-man experience and behavior in terms of sexualimpulses and unconscious motivations (drives,d~sires, f~ars, needs, and conflicts). Whe~ ap-plied to literature, these theories (based on tnework of Nancy Chodorow, Helene Cixous,Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein, and JacquesLacan, among others) help readers discern themo.tivations of characters, envision the psycho-logical state of the author as implied ~y thetext, and evaluate the psychological reasons fortheir own interpretations. Readers may applythe psychoanalytic approach to explain whyHamlet is deeply disturbed by his mother's

rhis ancient stone sculpture, called remarriage, why Holden Caulfield rebels at:he Venus of Willendorf, represents an school (in]. D. Salinger's The Catcher in theIrchetype known as the earth mother. Rye), or why Rochester is blinded (in Cha'ri~me

Bronte's Jane Eyre).Theorists who. use t~e work of psychiatrist Carl Jung to explore

archetypes (meanmgfU1Images that arise from the human unconscious:md that appear as recurring figures or patterns in literature) are also us-109 a psychoanalytic approach to interpret literature, whether the liter-ary form is a ~airy tale, fable, epic poem, Greek drama, postmodernnovel, or movie scnpt. Archetypal figures include the hero, the earthmother, the s~apegoat, the outcast, and the cruel stepmother; arche-typal'patterns mclude the quest, the initiation, the test, and the return.

As you read, trust your own reactions. Were you amused, moved orcon~use~? Which chara~~ers interested you? Were you able to follow'theplot. DId the work remind you of any experience of your own? Did it

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introduce you to a different v;orld in terms of historical or geographicalsetting, or did you encounter a familiar cast of characters? T~ese firstimpressions can provide the seeds from which str?ng essays Will grow,especially when they are later modified as you consider the work further.

(1)You can understand your response by consideringhow it is shaped by your identity.

When reflecting on your response to some element of a work of litera-ture, you can consider how your reading might be shaped by the fac-tors that make you who you are. For example, if you find yourselfresponding positively or negatively to a character i~ a novel orplay, youcould ask yourself whether this response has anything to do WIth your

III psychological makeup,III political beliefs,III gender or sexual orientation,III race, "III social class,III religion,III geographic location, orII ~onscious or unconscious theoretical approach.

Thinking along these lines can help you decide how to focus your essayand prepare you for using one or more theoretical approaches as thebasis for your interpretation.

(2)After choosing a topic, develop it, based on evidencein the text.

If you are choosing your own topic, your first step is to reflect on yourpersonal response, focusing on that response .asyo~ formulate a tenta-tive thesis statement. Next, consider what specific evidence from the textwill best explain and support your interpretation and thesi~ statement.

Because most readers will be' interested in what you think, you needto discover a way to demonstrate your originality in terms .of a topicyou can develop adequately, by applying one o~.more rhetoncal met.h-ods (see 3g). You might define why you consider ~ characte~ heroic,classify a play as a comedy of manners, or descnbe a settIng thatanchors a work's meaning. Perhaps you can compare and contrast twopoems on a similar subject or explore cause-and-effect relationships ina novel. Why, for example: does an apparently intelligent character

404 Writing to Interpret Literature

~~e a ba~ decision? Or you might show how the description of a,(am-ily shouse m a novel defines that family's values or reveals the effects ofan underlying conflict.

(3) Research can reveal the ways other readers have responded "to a literary work. .

you will u~doubte~ly anchor your essay in your personal respons~ ormte~pretatJon. But If you read works of literary theory, visit online dis-CUsslOJ;l.groupsor forums (see 6c), participate in class discussions orbec?m~ active in a book club, you can engage in a dialogue that tanennc~ your own ideas. Many instructors prefer that you advance y,ourown ideas at the same time as you use and give credit to outside so~'rces.Although it is tempting to lean heavily on the interpretations ofexpert.s, reme~ber that your readers are mainly interested in your inrier-pretatlOn ~d in your use of the sometimes conflicting interpretationsof othe~s (including the other members of your class) to support yomown pomts. ' !

To locate material on a specific writer or work, consult your library'scatalog (see 9Q-c) and The MIA International Bibliography, an index ofbooks and articles about literature that is an essential resource for'iit~r-ary studies and that can be consulted in printed volumes or online ..

In addition.to .having books and articles.about specific writers:ybl!lfschool or public library also possesses a number of reference books thatprovide basic information on writers, books, and literary theory. W0r:l~such as Contemporary Authors, The Oxford Companion to English Litera-ture, and The New Princeton Handbook of Poetic Terms can be usefulwhen you are beginning your research or when you have encouht~):diterms you need to clarify '

An i~tefpretation .that attempts to explain the meaning of one featureof a literary work 1S called an analysis. To analyze a work; of Iiteraruse,a writerfocuseson one of its elements, such.as the setting or 'the maincharacter, and determines how that one element contributes to tnework's overall I meaning. A common form of analysis is chara~):el'

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,nnalysis, in which ,a writer interprets one or more aspects of a singlecharacter. An analysis can also focus on a single scene, symbol, or

rherne.An interpretation that attempts to explain every element in a literary

work is called an explication and is usually used only with poetry.When explicating William Wordsworth's "A Slumber Did My SpiritSeal," a writer might note that the 5 sound reinforces the hushed feelingof sleep and death in the poem. But it would also be necessary to con-sider the meanings ofs/umber, spirit, and seal., ' " ' ,

An evaluation of a work gauges 'how successful the autho] is in com-municating meaning to readers. The most common types of evaluationare book, theater, and film reviews, ,A writer can, also evaluare.a.wdrk byfocusing on how successfully one of its parts contributes to the mean-ing conveyed by the others. Like any o~h~r interpretation, an evaluationis a type of argument in which a writer cites evidence to persuade read-ers to accept a clearly formulated thesis. (See chapters 3 and 8.) Anevaluation of a literary work should provide evidence of irsstrengths aswell as its weaknesses, if any.

Writing about·literature involves adhering to several conventions. ,