1. The literary text contains its own meaning within itself.

The best way

to study the text is to study the words on the page, without any
predefined agenda for what one wants to find there.
2. The text will reveal constants, universal truths, about human nature,
because human nature itself is constant and unchanging. People are
pretty much the same everywhere, in all ages and in all cultures.
3. The text can speak to the inner truths of each of us because our
individuality, our "self," is something unique to each of us, something
essential to our inner core. This inner essential self can and does
transcend
all
external
social
forces.
4. What critics do is interpret the text (based largely on the words on
the page) so that the reader can get more out of reading the text.
Reading Protocols
"The reader is left with everything to do, yet everything has already been
done; the work only exists precisely on the level of his abilities; while he reads
and creates, he knows that he could always create more profoundly; and this
is why the work appears to him as inexhaustible and as impenetrable as an
object."
(Sartre, What
is
Literature (1949)
A. Theoretical Premises
1. CRITICAL INTERPRETATION IS AN ONGOING PROCESS OF
ADJUSTMENT,
REVISION,
AND
(SELF)
DISCOVERY.
..."the making and revising of assumptions, the rendering and regretting of
judgments, the coming to and abandoning of conclusions, the giving and
withdrawing of approval, the specifying of causes, the asking of questions, the
supplying of answers, the solving of puzzles" (Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in
This Class?, 1980, 00. 158-9)
"There is no escaping this process, for...the text cannot at any moment be
grasped as a whole. But what may at first sight have seemed like a
disadvantage, in comparison with our normal modes of perception, may now
seem to offer distinct advantages, in so far as it permits a process through

which the aesthetic object is constantly being structured and restructured."

(Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading, 1978, p. 112).
"As a recreative mode, critical interpretation participates in an endless
process of translation and readjustment by which a culture takes possession
of its texts. Interpretation is thus promoted from its subordinate position within
the traditional literary paradigm, to an active participator in the process of
cultural negotiation. Its role is to reinstate tension and dynamism in literature,
valorizing areas discounted by the objective, intentionalist paradigm of
criticism: semantic indeterminacies, ideological investments, gender relations,
'affects and values,'...'public norms of language.'...Interpretation opens a
space of conflict and variation, negotiated differently by every reader." (Marcel
Cornis-Pope, Hermeneutic Desire and Critical Rewriting, 1992, pp. 11-12.)

2. MEANING EMERGES IN THE INTERACTION BETWEEN TEXT, READER

AND
CULTURE.
"By reading we uncover the unformulated part of the text, and this very
indeterminacy is the force that drives us to work out a configurative meaning
while at the same time giving us the necessary degree of freedom to do so."
(Wolfgang Iser, The Implied Reader, 1974, p. 287).
..."The significance of the work...does not lie in the meaning sealed within the
text, but in the fact that the meaning brings out what had been previously
sealed within us....Through gestalt-forming, we actually participate in the text,
and this means that we are caught up in the very thing we are producing. This
is why we often have the impression, as we read, that we are living another
life." (Iser, The Act of Reading, pp. 157, 132.)
...[Meanings] will not be objective because they will always have been the
product of a point of view rather than having been simply 'read off'; and they
will not be subjective because that point of view will always be social or
institutional. Or by the same reasoning, one could say that they
are both subjective and objective: they are subjective because they inhere in a
particular point of view and are therefore not universal; and they are objective
because the point of view that delivers them is public and conventional rather
than individual or unique." (Fish, Is There a Text in This Class?, pp. 335-6).

3. CRITICAL INTERPRETATIONS RELY ON READING INTUITIONS AND

RESPONSES. THE STUDY OF TEXTS IS IMPLICITLY A STUDY OF
READING
PROCESSES.
"The ability to perceive oneself during the process of participation is an
essential quality of aesthetic experience; the observer finds himself in a
strange, halfway position: he is involved, and he watches himself being
involved. However, this position is not entirely nonprogrammatic, for it can
only come about when existing codes are transcended or invalidated."
(Iser, The Act of Reading, p. 134).
"Our knowledge of our behavior can become available only through language
and thought. We are thus motivated to acquire self-awareness, which in turn
gives us the capacity to regulate and to produce further, more complicated,
more adaptive motives to govern growth." (David Bleich, Subjective Criticism,
1981, p. 64).
"The process of reading thus entails a progressive growth of insight: of the
reader into the text as something other than himself, and into himself as one
who is transformed by his encounter with the texts." (Samuel Weber, "Caught
in the Act of Reading," in Demarcating the Disciplines: Philosophy, Literature,
Art, 1986, p. 185.)

B. The Reading Process

Pre-Reading
1.
Defining
the
horizon
of
expectations.
The term "horizon of expectation (Hans Robert Jauss) designates an area of
"collective" assumptions, genre conventions and cultural ideologies shared by
texts and readers. In retracing the work's "horizon of expectation," reading can
tease out the sociocultural contexts activated by a work, and participate in
their reformulation. Similarly, by identifying his/her own expectations, a reader
can begin to understand the assumptions, experiences, preconceptions that
he/she brings to the process of reading.
2.
Identifying
SUGGESTED
a) TEXT

assumptions,
interests,
PRE-READING

preconceptions.
QUESTIONS:

What assumptions do you have about the author of the text?

 Have you read any of his other works?

Knowing when and where this story/poem was written, what are
your expectations of theme, character treatment, techniques?
Do you have any expectations of genre from glancing at the text?
What suggestions/expectations does the title convey?
b) READER
What are your dominant feelings before reading this text?
Are you looking forward to reading a text by this particular author?
Does the author, genre, type of literature appeal to you?
What are your general expectations from reading?
Does it matter if you read for pleasure or for "study"?
Do you use different techniques and assumptions in reading "for
pleasure'?
Are you aware of any of your strengths and weaknesses in reading?

First Reading [of fiction]

Rationale: We are trained to react in more or less similar ways to narrative
texts during first reading. Strong generic, textual and cultural expectations
regulate our responses. Many of us read fiction self-indulgently, seeking a
reconfirmation of our expectations and biases. The reading process itself
relies heavily on sequential and holistic procedures, on "naturalization"
(Jonathan Culler), "consistency-building" (Iser), "selective attention" (Louise
M. Rosenblatt). We read for closure and coherence, singling out solid clues
and eliminating problematic ones. We smooth over contradictions and follow
the narrative to settled conclusions even when we distrust the narratorial
voice. On the other hand, we find stories that thwart such expectations
disappointing, obscure, and "dry."

The following methodology is meant to disrupt--through analytic questions-the linear progress of first reading. It is also intended to give us a critical
awareness about the various operations that we perform during reading, as
we try to make sense of literary texts. Most of the questions below encourage
readers to pay more attention to textual details and language clues, to notice
their constellations, to reflect on their inconsistencies and on the extent to
which they resist a totalistic reading.
While you read, pause periodically and make a note of some of the following:
details of plot or character that are emphasized, or that you have
singled out as significant;
narrative sequences, their role in foreshadowing and building
thematic coherence;
words, clusters of images that stick in your memory; your
immediate response to these textual sequences;
associations, connections, fantasies triggered by the text's
situations; specific insights they offer about text and reader;
"gaps," contradictions, unresolved questions in the story's plot,
characterization or overall structure;
what seems to carry forward the flow of reading, or, on the
contrary, obstruct it;
narratorial voices, their authority and trustworthiness;
expectations upon opening this story and how these are
fulfilled/thwarted by the text;
your overall reactions to the story, aspects you found challenging
or hard to accept.
These early response notes can take varied forms, from unedited annotations
and questions, to more elaborate and explorative comments on specific
problems in the text. Make these annotations while youread, without editing or
reformulating too much.

Rereading
Rationale: NO reading is complete without a closer examination of the
"presentational aspect" (rhetoric, literary strategies, cultural implications) in
the text and its effects on readers. First reading often yields an incomplete,
impressionistic interpretation that tends "to settle too soon, too quickly" the
text. Having little more than first reading responses to depend on, readers will
resort in their written "explications" to a literalist, "blocked" pattern approach:
"they lift various segments out of the text and then combine them through
arbitrary sequential connections (usually conjunctions)--a composing mode
that is marked by a consistent restriction of options to explore and develop
ideas." (Mariolina Salvatori, "Reading and Writing a Text: Correlations
between Reading and Writing Patterns," College English, 45 [1983]: 659)
Rereading allows us to retrace and analyze our first reading responses,
relating them back to the text's generic and cultural features, but also to the
assumptions, biases, and experiences that we bring to the text. Rereading
should be more self-conscious, explorative, reformulative: "Rereading, an
operation contrary to the commercial and ideological habits of our society,
which would have us 'throw away' the story once it has been consumed
('devoured'), so that we can then move on to another story, buy another book,
and which is tolerated only in certain marginal categories of readers (children,
old people, and professors), rereading...alone saves the text from repetition
(those who fail to re-read are obliged to read the same story everywhere)."
(Roland Barthes, S/Z, 1974, pp. 15-6.)
One way of making rereading more effective is to organize it around specific
questions that call for a comparison between first and second reading,
between response and critical interpretation. Readers will be asked to
reexamine their position toward the story after second reading, to ponder
some of the exclusions, distortions, misreadings they have perpetrated during
first reading. They are also asked to speculate on how successfully they have
attended to details, howq closely they have monitored the progress of the
story through inferences, predictions, connections. This is an example of a
second-reading questionnaire:
how did the story's general purport and orientation change after
second reading?
what aspects of the story have you "misremembered," adapted to
conform to your first reading?

 what possibilities of the text have you ignored (not account for)
during earlier reading?
what "mysteries" or "gaps" in the narrative have you tried to settle
and how successfully?
what aspects in the story are still unresolved, what questions
unanswered?
who did you identify with during first reading, and how did this
identification affect your understanding of the story?
have your generic or thematic expectations about the story
changed?
is the story more/or less satisfying after second reading, and why?
as you begin to sort out the textual "evidence" in support of an
interpretation of the story, which details do you find useful, and
which seem difficult to resolve with your interpretation?
has this approach to reading given you more confidence in your
judgments and helped you understand the intricate details of the
text better?
Ideally, the reader should pursue an uninterrupted interpretative process, with
an active, transformative rereading already implied in first reading. But in
common practice, or in some of the current psychological and semiotic
theories of interpretation, first and second reading are perceived as separate,
even conflicting. First reading is described as sequential, superficial, mimetic.
Only a second, retroactive reading can produce "significance" by identifying
and reconfiguring the various perspectives of the text (Michael
Riffaterre, Semiotics of Poetry, pp. 81ff)
A critical-comparative rereading refocuses the reader's attention on the work
as an elaborate structure of discourse, on the text's rhetoric and ideology
usually missed in first reading. While first reading depends primarily on the
expectation of pleasure (of a vicarious or hermeneutic kind), rereading draws
on critical (self)awareness. Enjoyment is not absent from this second phase of
reading, but it involves the transformation of experiential pleasure into the
analogical pleasure of intellectual experiencing which connects the reader to

the broader contexts of his culture (Northrop Frye). A successful reading will
emerge from the interplay of naive absorption and critical reexamination,
participation, and self-reflection.

C. Working with reader-oriented theory and the reading/rereading

process in actual classes has certain pedagogical implications:
Students need to read, write, reread, and rewrite, exploring
leading questions related to each genre/work in order to think
critically about a text;
To keep this reading/writing process from being too subjective
(and thus sometimes wandering far from the text), it needs to be
done collectively and comparatively, negotiating questions and
meaning as a class and not just as an individual. Thus students
gradually come to understand the strengths and weaknesses of
their individual readings, when challenged by other readings and
responses to their own reading, and so learn to develop stronger
and more persuasive interpretations;
Every student must participate fully in order for the class dynamic
to work, and in order to develop the strongest, most detailed
readings of a work;
Students must have as much information about biographical,
socio-cultural and historical contexts and leading, open questions
related to the text as possible, but presented in a voluntary, timely
fashion (i.g. they should have it available when they "ask" for it);
The teacher's role, then, is more of a coach and collegial reader
than the authoritative establisher of interpretation, participating as
a more knowledgeable rereader but still another reader in the
class whose interpretation should be comparatively muted.
Very likely there are other principles, but these will satisfy for a beginning! In
addition, it must be noted that the principles of reading process theory have
been adapted drastically, depending on the level of the class and the literary
experience of the students.