Critical Reading Perspectives

….Cuz there’s never just one

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

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

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

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

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

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

Marxist• Read in terms of

exploring issues of social class and power, especially the treatment of working class

• Concerned with: • political, cultural, and

social contexts

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

The End